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HISTORY OF THE SETTLEMENT 



O F 



STEUBEN COUNTY, N. Y. 



INCLUDING NOTICES OF THE OLD RIONEER SETTLERS 
AND THEIR ADVENTURES. 



BY GUY H. MCMASTER. 



Batt) : 

It . S . U N D E It H I L L & CO 



1853. 






THREE HUNDRED COl'IES REPRINTED 

FOR 

GEORGE PERKINS HUMPHREY, 

t893. 



2a£ 



*&& 









>* 



Rt 1 intcdby 
IV. F. Humfhrry, Geneva, N. Y, 



PREFACE. 



The collection of the following annals was undertaken at the request of the 
publishers of this volume. While of course it was not expected that the 
general public would feel any interest in the subject of the work, it was yet 
believed that to the citizens of Steuben County a chronicle of its settlement 
would possess some value. The task was entered upon, not without mis- 
givings that the historic materials to be found in a backwoods county, desti- 
tute of colonial and revolutionary reminiscence, and possessing an antiquity 
of at most seventy years beyond which there was nothing even to be guessed 
at, would prove rather scanty ; and, while it cannot be pretended that the 
vein has been found richer than it promised, it is nevertheless hoped that 
something of interest to citizens of the county has been rescued from the 
forgetfulness into which the annals of the settlement were fast passing. 

All the facts set forth in the pages ensuing, except those for which credit 
is given to other sources, were collected by the Editor of the volume, by 
personal inquiry in most cases, from the surviving pioneers of the county. 
He has been unable to enrich his collection by any ancient documentary 
matter — letters, diaries or memoranda. The early history of the county 
rested in the memory of the few pioneers who are living, and in the traditions 
handed down by those who are departed. The appearance of Mr. O. Tur- 
ner's timely History of "Phelps and Gorham's Purchase," after this work 
was prepared for the press, has enabled the editor to correct the results of his 
own inquiries in several important instances. 

Those whose memory extends to the period of the settlement, will find 
this but an unsatisfactory chronicle of the old time. Individuals who merit 
notice as early settlers of the county have probably been passed over un- 
noticed ; many facts of interest and importance have doubtless escaped the 
researches of the editor, and serious inaccuracies will undoubtedly be dis- 
covered in the statements recorded. A fair degree of diligence in searching 
for facts, and a sincere desire to preserve honorable among those who shall 
hereafter inhabit this county, the memory of those plain, hardy and free- 
hearted men who first broke into its original wilderness and by the work of 
their own hands began to make it what ft how is, are all that can be offered 
in extenuation of the meagreness of the results of the editor's labors. The 
collection should have been made twenty years ago. Many pioneers of note 
— men of adventure, of observation and of rare powers of narration, have 
gone from among the living since that time. Much of valuable and enter- 
taining reminiscence has perished with them. 



IV 

It is well enough, perhaps, to add in explanation of vagaries of divers de- 
scriptions which may be encountered in the following pages, and for which 
the reader may be at a loss to account, that this volume was written nearlj 
two years ago, and at a period of life when such a lapse of time happily 
brings great changes of taste and feeling. 

The editor takes pleasure in acknowledging his obligations to citizens in 
various parts of the county to whom he had occasion to apply in the course 
of his inquiries, for the readiness with which he has in all cases been assisted 
in the prosecution of his researches. 

Bath, Dec, 1852. 



NOTICE OF THE TOPOGRAPHY AND GEOLOGY OF 
STEUBEN COUNTY.* 



Steuben County occupies the summit and eastern slope of that ridge 
which divides the waters of Seneca Lake that flow to the Susquehanna, from 
those that enter the Genesee. The course of this ridge is northeast and 
southwest ; its breadth from base to base is from forty to fifty miles ; the 
elevation of the eastern base is about nine hundred feet, and that of the 
western base (the valley of the Genesee,) nearly eighteen hundred feet above 
tide water ; while the highest intervening uplands attain an elevation of 
twenty-five hundred feet above the same level. The summit of the ridge 
follows the curve of the Genesee at the distance of about ten miles from that 
river. The streams flowing down the brief western slope are, therefore, but 
inconsiderable creeks, while the waters collected from the other side supply 
the channels of three rivers, the Tioga, the Canisteo and the Conhocton, 
which uniting form the Chemung, and add essentially to the power of the 
noble Susquehanna. The region composing this dividing range is an intri- 
cate hill country, consisting of rolling and irregular uplands, intersected by 
deep river valleys, by the beds of several lakes, and by the crooked ravines 
worn by innumerable creeks. Few rocks are presented at the surface of the 
ground, and the whole land was originally covered with a dense forest — as 
well the almost perpendicular hill sides, as the valleys and uplands. The 
river valleys are bounded by abrupt walls from two hundred to eight hundred 
feet high, which sometimes confine the streams within gorges of a few rods in 
width, sometimes grant a mile, and sometimes at the meeting of transverse 
alleys enclose a plain of several miles in circuit. 

The dividing ridge curves from the western along the northern boundary 
of the county. The waters of the principal northern towns run to the Con- 
hocton, while those of the counties adjoining, flowing in an opposite direc- 
tion, feed the central lakes of New York and find ultimately Lake Ontario, 
the St. Lawrence and the foggy bays of Newfoundland. But that the abrupt 
gulf of Crooked Lake pierces deep into the hills from the north, and carries 
off the meagre brooks of two towns seated upon its western bluffs, our couuty 
would contain within itself a complete system of waters. The streams 
would pour down on all sides from a circle of hills and escape only by the 
narrow gate of the Chemung, at a depth of sixteen hundred feet below the 
springs upon the bounding summits. A wall would enclose a complete 
privince, and the scientific citizen hovering in a balloon above the single 
gateway in the south wonld behold, fifty miles to the northward, blue ranges 

* Gathered chiefly from the State Geological Reports. 



sweeping in a splendid curve, to the Seneca, then bending southward to 
complete the perfect ring of highlands. The Crooked Lake is an intruder 
and sadly mars this scheme of uniformity. Breaking through the barrier 
which separates the northwestern tributaries of the Susquehanna from those 
nomadic waters that wander to Canada aud the ocean of icebergs, it lies in 
a dark and deep bed sixteen miles within the county, while the southern ex- 
tension of its valley pierces through to the Conhocton and forms, by its 
junction with the channel of that river, the broad and pleasant valley of 
Bath. But few streams, however, have been carried captive by this great 
robber to the shivering seas of Labrador. Two or three unfortunate brooks 
are compelled to send thither their unwilling waters ; and, aside from these 
resources, it subsists upon secret springs and the rains that fall upon the 
bluffs and pour into the lake by a thousand short ravines or gutters. 

The hills of Steuben county are irregular blocks cut out of a plateau of 
clay, rock and gravel, by the action of the elements. Of the forces and ele- 
ments by the action of which this original plateau was created, and of the 
later forces which afterwards hewed it into its present form — forms like those 
of a block of ice shattered by the blow of a hammer — we have a singular 
account from men of science. 

That the regions we now occupy, and indeed this whole western region, 
even to the Cordilleras (or rather the foundations upon which they are built,) 
were, in time past, at the bottom of a vast ocean ; that certain continents 
which in the earliest ages sat in the East, were broken up violently by con- 
vulsions of nature, or were gradually dissolved by forces milder than the arms 
of those rude slaves dwelling under the earth which are of old reported by 
Geologists to have overturned mountains, and cloven in twain fast anchored 
islands, and that the currants of the ocean flowing like steady rivers towards 
the setting sun, were laden with the dust of continents thus destroyed, and 
strewed it over the submerged plains of the West : that after these rivers of 
the ocean had labored silently and without ceasing for many ages, the whole 
bed of the Western deep was covered to the depth of many thousand feet 
with the materials of which the ancient Eastern world was built, till at length 
peaks, then islands, then a new continent, appeared upon the face of the 
globe, while the waters by many channels ran down into the vast hollow of 
the uprooted continent to form a new ocean ; — all these things State Geolo- 
gists seem to believe established — or at least they feel at liberty to surmise 
substantially to this effect. 

Further than this, we are invited to see the builders at their secret labors. 
Sluggish rivers of mud roll through the deep like enormous serpents, and 
waste themselves before they reach the valley of the Mississippi. Brighter 
torrents of sand following spread a gay carpet over the brackish trail of the 
mud-snake ; then streams of pebble and shattered rock and of all the powders 
of an abraded world deposit, now Niagara Groups, now Chemung Groups, or 
when stirred by tempests and water-spouts settle into course conglomerate. 
We are shown, also, periods of a wonderful life. Millions of those brilliant 



"shells and crinoideans and crustaceans," whose fantastic images are stamped 
upon the rocks, dwelt in numberless nations among the waters, while those 
hideous monsters whose names were only less formidable than themselves, 
prowled through the depths below, or floundered in elephantine antics among 
the billows above. Once a part of the floor of the ocean, which seems to 
have been the roof of a cavern occupied by certain "secret black and mid- 
night" powers, sinks downward, arouses the horrible Pluto of Mud from his 
slumbers in bottomless volcanoes, who, rising in towering anger through the 
rafters of his broken house, overwhelms coral forests, the empires of the gor- 
geous fossil tribes, and all the beautiful mansions of the deep with a tremend- 
ous flood of mire. Other atrocious giants come forth from the volcanic 
furnaces into which the waters have fallen, and heat the ocean with spouts of 
steam, while certain angry chemists, drenched in their subterranean labora- 
tories by the sudden inundation of brine, let loose their most poisonous 
gasses, and catching the unfortunate nymphs, dose them with deadly physic. 
All creatures perish. Even the gigantic and roaring monsters, choked with 
mud and suffocated by the poisons that rise from the reservoirs of death 
below, flounder in dying agonies. Their carcasses are drifted to and fro for 
a time, and thousands of years afterwards, men digging in mines lay bare 
their huge white jaws and their mighty shanks, and fasten up their skeletons 
with wire in National Museums. All these, and many other strange things, 
showing how at last the region we inhabit was built, we see, from the hap- 
pily settled times of the present, into the troubled times far away — times 
truly of "agitation and fanaticism." 

Let us now leave greater speculations, and look homeward. That tract of 
land now occupied by the five western counties of New York in the southern 
tier, appeared above the waters in the form of a regular plateau with a mean 
elevation of two thousand feet above the level of the present ocean, over- 
looking the sea which covered the northern counties, the Canadas, and the 
Great Western Valley. The detritus from which this plateau was constructed, 
had ripened into a series of shales, flagstones and sandstones, which from 
the difference of the organic remains of the upper and lower ledges, have 
been divided by geologists into two groups, — the upper or Chemung group, 
and the lower or Portage group. The maps represent these as first appear- 
ing near Chenango Countv in this State, thence running westwards through 
the southern counties, with a breadth of some fifty miles, and a thickness of 
about 2,500 feet, thence continuing along the shore of Lake Erie, and toward 
the western extremity of that lake, making a bold curve southward. Their 
course, however, appears not to have been carefully followed in their wander- 
ings toward the far west ; for we hear of them as being "probably" in Indi- 
ana, in reduced circumstances, with a thickness of less than 400 feet. 

But this matters not at present. We are shown then at the period of our 
deliverance from the deep, a fine plateau, extending from Lake Erie far 
toward the east, and from the foot of the Pennsylvanian mountains north- 
ward about sixty miles, to a great bay of the ocean. How did this become a 



labyrinth of hills? The waters that fell from the clouds, or that issued from 
the grounds wandered this way and that, under the guidance of their restless 
instincts seeking the ocean. Many combining, formed rivers, and furrowed 
for themselves deep and curving valleys ; the creeks conquered crooked but 
triumphant passages through ledges of sand stone, and beds of shale, wear- 
ing their channels by industrious labor through many centuries ; while the 
brooks, the runnels, the spring torrents, and all those lesser hydraulic 
tribes, slashed the fair table land, in all directious with gorges and ravines. 

Work like this would have hewn the plateau into abrupt blocks. It would 
have left a multitude of isolated and inaccessible tables, islands divided by 
perpendicular gulfs. Neither man nor beast could have ascended to the up- 
lands. The river valleys would have been broad halls enclosed by walls of 
rock : and the lumberman roving up the beds of the tributary streams would 
find himself involved in hopeless defiles, with precipices jutting forth on 
either side, while hundreds of feet above his head the pine and the fir 
swayed their princely plumes in derision, like savage kings jeering the 
Spaniard from inaccessible cliffs. 

But observe how the judicious elements, with rude and ungeomctrical but 
kindly labor, prepared the new made region to be a habitation for man. 
The frosts with powerful wedges cracked the precipitous bluffs, or with 
mighty hammers, as it would seem, shivered to atoms rocky pyramids. The 
rains rounded the edges of the cliffs, here pushing off great masses of earth, 
there sweeping loosened ledges into the ravines, while the invisible powers 
of the aii working many centuries with those more boisterous slaves, which 
hollowed the water courses and broke up the rocks, wrought at length the 
rolling ridges, the broad knobs, the blunt promontories, and all the curious- 
ly designed mountain-figures that now cover the land. The work was thus 
made perfect. Forests cover the hills, and republicans coming after many 
days with plows and axes, find a land made ready for them. After many 
days, loo, civil engineers, with their glasses and brazen instruments, appear 
at the foot of the ridge dividing the Susquehanna from the Genesee, and 
find that the rivers and industrious brooks have been laboring at this gravel 
rampart for many thousand years, guided, indeed, by very rude trigonom- 
etry, hired by no pledge of public stocks and undisturbed by loans or rumors 
of loans, but have yet done the labor of myriads of miners, and have pierced 
the ridge with such admirable cuts, that the locomotive, instead of dragging 
its weary wheels up an abrupt ascent of fifteen hundred feet, winds swiftly 
through mountain halls, (at the risk, it is true, after the equinoctial rains, 
of encountering in certain places, a sliding hill-top or an avalanche of 
cobble-stones, which is quite alpine but unpleasant,) ever finding a gorge 
cloven through the broad bulwarks that seem to bar the valley ; ever finding 
some crooked but deep defile through the bristling promontories that crowd 
together as if expressly for the discouragement of railroad directors. 

It will be remembered that at the deliverance of Steuben county, with its 
four western neighbors, from the water, a large tract of land in the North, 



which is now high and dry, was lying under the sea. This sea lost life 
rapidly, and bled to death as it were through many wounds. Until its level 
sank below the level of the upper valley of the Canistes, the channel of that 
river was one of the passages through which it was drained. The torrent 
that ran roaring through the hills when supplied from such a reservoir was 
a powerful one ; but since that has failed, the river has shrunk to ver}' mode- 
rate dimensions, and now subsists upon the scanty charities of the mountain 
springs. Similar rivers probably flowed through many of the southwardly 
inclining valleys and covered them with "northern drift." 

In descending to details, the prospect is quite disheartening. We are 
mortified to confess that our county is destitute of volcanoes. We have not 
so much as a Geyser. Of scoriae and moonstones there is an utter deficiency; 
and as for trap-rock there is not an ounce of it between Tyrone and Troups- 
burgh. The true patriot will, however, hear with pride, that fucoides are 
tolerably abundant, and his ecstacy will with difficulty be suppressed when 
he learns not only that here was once the abode of the Holoptychus and the 
Goniatites Acostatus, but that here we find the relics of the Astrypa Hystrix 
and the Ungulina Stiborbiailaris, and of other eccentric aborigines which 
nibbled sea-weed on our native hills in ages past, when Saturn was but 
Crown Prince. It is consoling also to remember that the tooth of a mam- 
moth was once found under the bed of one of our central mill-ponds ; reason- 
ing from which fact, he is a bold man who will dare to deny that the 
broad-horned mastodon once bellowed through these gorges, and that here 
the gigantic antediluvian transfixed the moster with his iron javelin ! It 
must be confessed, however, that the State Geologists are silent with regard 
to antediluvian sportsmen. It will be with intense satisfaction that the 
sincere patriot meets upon the hills of Troupsburgh and Greewood the air- 
iest localities in the country, being 2,500 feet above the sea, that venerable 
and most worthy patriarch among the rocks of the earth, Old Red Sand- 
stone. " Here the rock consists of a thin layer of argillaceous sandstone, 
highly ferruginous in character, and bearing a general resemblance to the 
iron ore of the Clinton Group. Its decomposition stains the soil a bright 
red color, and from these indications it has been supposed that valuable beds 
of ore would be found. It is extremely doubtful, however, whether this 
stratum will ever prove of any importance as an iron ore." — {State Geol 
Rep.) 

Rocks of the Portage Group " appear in all the deep ravines and along the 
water courses in the northern part of the county, while the high grounds 
are occupied with those of the next group. ***** 
At Hammondsport, in the ravine above Mallory's Mill, we find about three 
hundred feet of rock exposed belonging to the Portage Group ; they are well 
characterized by the forcoides graphica. The mass exposed consists in the 
lower part principally of shale and thin layers of sandstone, and at a higher 
point numerous layers of sandstone from four to ten inches thick. The 
edges of all the layers exposed are covered with crystals of selenite or crystal- 



lized gypsum. About one mile from the mouth of this ravine an excavation 
for coal has been made in the black shale which alternates with the sand- 
stone and olive shale. The indications of coal at this point were a few frag- 
ments of vegetables, iron pyrites, and the odor of bitumen arising from the 
shale. The work is at present abandoned until some new excithment, or 
reported exhibition of burning gas shall induce others to engage in the enter- 

prise. * * 

One mile north of Bath there is a stratum of very tough argillo-calcareous 
rock three feet thick. This furnishes some of the finest building and foun- 
dation stone, and should be of such a quality as to receive a fine polish, it 
will be a valuable acquisition to the mineral wealth of the county. : 
The rocks of the Chemung group continue along the valley of the Conhocton 
to Painted Post and as far the Tioga as the south line of the State, the tops 
of the high hills excepted, which are capped by conglomerate in a few places. 
The valley of the Canistes is bounded on both sides by almost unbroken 
ranges of rock of the same group. The same rocks are seen along the valley 
of the Five Mill Creek which appears to have been formerly a continuation 
of the Canandaigua Lake Valley. * 

The valley of Loon Lake is the continuation of Hemlock Lake and Spring- 
water Valleys. In the neighborhood of the lake large accumulations of 
drift, arise in rounded hills fifty or sixty feet above the general level, and 
skirt the valley on either side. * 

The country known as Howard Flats is formed of drift hills and ridges, but 
little elevated above the general level. I could not ascertain the depth of 
the drift, but the deepest wells do not reach its termination. 
Sandstone proper for grindstones are found along Bennett's and Rigg's 
creeks. ********** 
This place is about four hundred and five hundred feet above the Canistes 
and fifteen hundred feet above tide-water. The source of Bennet's creek is 
about eight hundred feet above the Canistes. Grindstones are obtained in 
Canistes on the land of Mr. Carter ; in Woodhull, on the land of Wm. 
Stroud, Esq., and elsewhere in Jasper, on the land of Col. Towsley. And 
sandstone is quarried on the land of Mr. Marshall, near Lagrange, which is 
used for hearthstones, tombstones, etc. On the land of Mr. Davis, at La- 
grange, a salt spring rises in the green shale. Several years since salt was 
made at this place and previously by the Indians. * 

There are numerous beds of lake marl and tufa in this county. Near Ark- 
port there is a bed of this kind which furnishes a considerable quantity of 
lime. In the town of Troupsburgh there is a bed of this marl. There is an 
extensive deposit on the Canesaraga, south of Danville, from which lime is 
burned. The summit level between this creek and the Canisteo presents an 
extensive muck swamp, and some beds of marl but their extent has not 
been ascertained." (State Geol. Rep.) 

We add the elevations of a few points above tide water : Seneca Lake, 447 
eet ; Mud Lake, i,iii feet ; summit between these lakes, 1,644 feet ; Village 



of Bath, 1,090 fc.t; summit between Mud Lake and Bath, 1,579; Arkport, 
1,194; summit between Bath and Arkport, 1,840; summit between Arkport 
and Angelica, 2,062 ; Troupsburgh Hills, 2,500 ; Corning, 925 ; Hornellsville, 
1,150 ; Crooked Lake, 718. 

Note. — The Mastodon's tooth alluded to above was dug from a bed of blue clay near the 
steam saw-mill of Mr. George Mitchell, in the Gulf Road between Bath and Wheeler. It 
is eight or ten inches in length. A large bone was disinterred at the same place which 
crumbled on exposure to the air. Further examination will doubtless disclose other 
grinders of this huge beast and perhaps a pair of those broad tusks, curving outwardly at 
the points, somewhat like scythes, which adorn the heads of its brethren found elsewhere, 
and with which one good able bodied fellow, sweeping his head to and fro in wrath, 
might mow down an army of antagonists like meadow grass. 

The bed of clay in which the tooth was found is of unusual depth and tenacity, and it is 
guessed that the animal of whicH the said bone was an appurtenance while rambling 
through the gulf, indiscreetly bounced into the mire and was unable to disengage his 
ponderous feet. It is further surmised that the bears may have pulled his skull around 
after death but that the frame of his body remains where he mired. 



5 

SETTLEMENT OF STEl K \n 

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The record of ev lenient ol the \ allc) ol 

the Cheiui \ , .•.. cwoodsmen, must be briel and un 

satisfactory, Beginning oui Investigations at the earliest times 

stem nat • \ ed to ha> e caught glim 

\\ estern world, n< ti be (bund to warrant i heliel that 

those ancient rovers, who are declared bj the learned to have 
\ isik\l the A moui-.ui shores hefon Columbus, cvei strayed to that 



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Inqnl hlng, then, all hope <A enrl< hing th< 
from the 1 Plnenician trader*, tht tax roll* oi 

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I- 1 1'-' ■ u tual iti ... 



IO 

men, near the close of the last century, a faint light, hardly more 
satisfactory than the total darkness of previous time, rested upon 
our forests, but in searching for tangible facts, the Historian 
meets only chagrin and disappointment. 

At the time of the discovery, this region, with a large and in- 
definite territory, now comprising portions of several states, con- 
stituted the domain of the Five Nations, a fierce and crafty 
people, eloquent sometimes, and of proud bearing, the " Romans 
of the West," as some call them. For many years after the 
anchors of the discoverers first sank in the bays of the new found 
continent, these wild warriors dwelt in their Long-House un- 
molested by the Europeans who sought the Western world. The 
councillors of their dreaded league met for conference at Genesee 
or Onondaga castles ; their armies marched from the Mohawk to 
the Miami, and there was none to dispute their supremacy over 
the magnificent forests of which their arms had made them the 
masters. But in a century and a half new commotions began to 
agitate the wilderness. Enemies more formidable than the 
Huron or the Algonquin, encamped on the borders of the domain 
of the Iroquois The drums of England were heard in the South, 
and the bugles of France in the North. Britons stood girt for 
battle behind the windmills of Manhattan and the palisades of 
Albany, while Gauls from the ramparts of Quebec, looked off over 
broad forests and wonderful valleys towards the Gulf of Mexico, 
and awaited the beginning of a contest which was to determine 
the destiny of a continent. 

The silence, which had for centuries pervaded the wilderness, 
was broken, and the chronicler may be reasonably required to 
gather from the battles, plots and treaties which ensued upon the 
meeting of these antagonists, some thing which may be fairly 
claimed as part of the history of these ancient valleys. In the 
varied triumphs and disasters which diversified the long pro- 
tracted struggle of French, English, and Iroquois, it may right- 
fully demand of the annalist that he find some event in the history 
of these hemlock ravines over which rhetoric may rave, research 
puzzle, or poetry whimper. 

But the conscientious chronicler will be compelled to disappoint 
public expectation. As the clouds will sometimes roll up black 



II 

and thunderous in the West, so that cattle fly from the fields, 
and prudent townsmen inspect their lightning rods, and after all 
the storm drifts towards the North, and rains floods, and flings 
thunderbolts in our very sight : so did the great political tempest 
of colonial times rain itself dry along the shores of Ontario and 
the St. Lawrence, while our own ill-starred mountains parched. 
From the day when Champlain, the voyager, fired under the 
bluffs of Ticonderoga the first musket volley that disturbed the 
forests of the Six Nations, down through a period of one hundred 
and sixty years, more than a half dozen armies, of a wild and 
picturesque composition, invaded, encamped, fought, and be- 
sieged, almost within sight of the Northern townships of this 
county, but had not the charity to fire so much as a pistol over 
its borders. Montcalm's bugles and Bradstreet's drums sounded 
through the neighboring groves. Provincial rangers and Britons, 
French chevaliers and feathered sachems filed along the Ontario 
trails. There were treaties, alliances, plots and conventions. 
There was also occasional oratory — as for example, the speech of 
Garanguala to De L,a Barre, the Canadian Governor, a masterpiece 
of daring and picturesque irony. Cannonading at Niagara, at 
Oswego, at Frontenac, startled the wilderness. Yet, though all 
this fine tumult disturbed the secluded courts of the Long House, 
not even rumors of wars agitated the valleys of the Conhocton 
and Tioga. It may be said that during the long contest for the 
rich plains and noble lakes of Western New York, our old hills 
sat quietly apart, like the camels of a captured caravan, while two 
hostile bands of robbers quarrelled for the booty. 

We gain, however, a single glimpse of the ancient time, which 
is of some interest, as revealing to our view the first communica- 
tion of this country with the civilized world. Two centuries ago 
the still streams and the outlets of our lakes were alive with 
beaver. Many a harmonious phalanx of these sagacious little 
socialists revelled in undisturbed ponds, where they had lived 
generation after generation since the flood, and busied themselves 
with the building of dams and other industrial pursuits, with 
none to molest or make afraid. At length, however, remorseless 
Dutch traders established themselves at Albany, and combining 
with French merchants in the forts of Canada, laid foul plots 



12 

against these tranquil republics, tempting the barbarians with 
bells and bright knives to begin the work of destruction. So 
presently the red huntsmen might have been seen skulking 
through the willows that overhung the creeks, and setting snares 
for the feet of the honest and unsuspecting beaver. Hundreds of 
these poor creatures suddenly found themselves bereft of their fur, 
and long-limbed savages, laden with ill-got plunder, hurried 
through the forests to the forts of the rapacious traders. Thus 
the first demand of the aristocracy of Europe upon our county 
was for the hides of its citizens — a very singular request, and one 
which the indignant republican will remember in connection with 
the tribute paid at this day to the Royalty of Hanover. 

A little more than a century after the massacre of the beaver, 
the Revolutionary war was raging through the land. Here again 
the Historic Muse displayed her ungraciousness, and refused to 
refresh our parching chronicles with a single skirmish. While 
the whole neighborhood in the North, East, and South, was alive 
with rangers and Indians, and rang daily with conflicts, scalp- 
ings, and burnings, silence of the grave reigned in our slumber- 
ing forests. The utmost that can be said for our county in setting 
up a revolutionary claim for it is, that it was sometimes a place 
of preparation for the ferocious allies of Great Britain before their 
attacks on the frontiers, and a place of retreat after the slaughter 
The utmost border settlements of our countrymen at that time in 
the States of New York and Pennsylvania were in the upper 
valley of the Mohawk, on the head waters of the Susquehanna, 
west of the Catskills, in the Wyoming country, and on the west 
Branch of the Susquehanna. Down the valleys of the Conhocton. 
Cauisteo, and Chemung, and up the valley of the Tioga, ran the 
trails by which sometimes the Tories and Indians stole upon the 
settlements in Pennsylvania from Fort Niagara, and by which 
again their bands, like hounds returning from the hunt, hurried 
to that notorious old kennel to be fed by their keepers. 

Hardly a fact, however, with regard to the movements of our 
county's primitive citizens during the war is preserved for us. 
An intrepid imagination might do much toward filling this un- 
fortunate blank in our annals, but till such a one assumes the 
task, each one must be content to make a Revolutionary History 



13 

for himself out of such hints as may lawfully be suggested. Each 
must imagine as he can the wolfish fraternity of Tories and In- 
dians traversing the war-trails of our wilderness. Hiakatoo, 
Little Beard, Brant, and the Great Captains of the Six Nations 
holding councils under elm-trees by the Chemung — the British 
officer, conspicuous with his sash and pistols, conferring by 
moonlight with savage chieftains that lean on their rifles, without 
the encampment, on the river bank, where the wild warriors are 
sleeping — the occasional squadron of canoes gliding down the 
swift stream toward the farms below on the Susquehanna. 

Now a file of barbarians descends the Canisteo trail from the 
north, turns up the Tioga and disappears. Soon their hatchets 
glitter afar off on the laurel ridge. Next is heard at mid- 
night the ringing of rifles on the West Branch, and the shouting 
of the borderers as the blaze of their cabins lights up the wooded 
cliffs around. Strange processions sometimes straggle up the 
vallies. Now the mongrel hounds of old Fort Niagara return 
from encounters with the foresters of Pennsylvania, shattered and 
discomfited ; but again the marauders return with scalps dangling 
at their belts, hurrying along captives, women and children who 
grow weary and are tomahawked, and also stout and weary 
woodsmen who must be bound and watched lest they rise in the 
night and beat out the brains of their captors. 

In the midst of the war the first lumbermen of the Canisteo 
may be seen on its upper waters hewing down pine trees, and 
shaping them by fire and steel into canoes. One would in vain 
search for the peers of that savage gang among the boisterous 
raftmen who, in modern day build their fleet in the eddies of that 
quiet stream. When the work is done and the little galleys are 
launched, what a lovely crew embarks ! The Butlers with their 
merciless renegades, the chosen chiefs of the Six Nations, the 
fiercest soldiers of the forest, all with their war trapping and 
weapons ride in the slender canoes down the stream — down 
through the silent gorges, over the brawling rifts — then emerging 
from island groves of elm descend the strong Tioga, then bending 
their long file into the Chemung, disappear beyond our borders 
in that blue notch chosen for the river's course in (he hills below. 



14 

This was the Armada that bore the destroyers of Wyoming.* 
Sullivan's two hundred barges move from Otsego and Wilkes- 
barre to Newtown. His five thousand men march northward 
through the wilderness, barely brushing the edge of our county. 
We hear a great crackling of villages on fire, of burning corn- 
stacks, and a lively crashing of orchards and skirmishing of 
scouts, but a few miles from our northern towns. That singular 
fatality however which marks our earliest history forbids a scout 
to be tortured, a corporal to be scalped, or even a pack-horse to 
be beheaded within the bailiwick of our own Sheriff. A few ad- 
venturous boatmen, however, moved up the Chemung to see 
what land might lie on the upper branches of that unknown 
river, f 

It appears, therefore, that Steuben County, from the earliest 
ages to the close of the Revolutionary War, was but a jungle of 
barbarism, without name and without history. Invading whirl- 

*The canoes which carried a large party of Tories and Indians to Wyom- 
ing in 1778, were made on the Canisteo. At the settlement of the upper 
valley of that river the trunks of trees, which proving unfit for use had been 
abandoned after having been partially wrought, with other traces of work, 
and some tools and weapons, were found on the farm of Col. J. R. Stephens 
near Hornelsville. The settlers had this fact also from the Indians. 

fGen. Sullivan invaded the territory of the Six Nations in 1779, pene- 
trated the midst of their forests, destroyed many of their villages, cut down 
their orchards, laid waste their cornfields, and inflicted on these impractica- 
ble savages a portion of the miseries which the frontiers had suffered from 
their hands during the previous years of the war. The destruction of life, how- 
ever, was but inconsiderable. The Indians and Tories made a stand at Newtown, 
but were summarily routed. The residue of the fighting in the campaign 
was adjusted by scouting parties. 

The traditions held by some that detachments of this army penetrated 
Steuben county, are probably without foundation. The oldest settlers con- 
sulted in the preparation of this sketch (Capt. Woolcott and Judge Knox of 
the town of Corning,) did not hear of the rumored skirmish at the brook 
called "Bloody Run" in the old town of Painted Post. At the time of the 
settlement, however, there were painted trees near that stream where the 
Indians were said (or guessed) to have tortured prisoners. Sullivan moved 
from Newtown, (Elmira) to the head of the Seneca by the Horseheads (where 
he killed a large number of pack-horses,) thence between the lakes to the 
outlet, thence to the Genesee, and returned by the same route. There is 
nothing in the official report of the General, or in the published journals of 
officers accompanying the expedition, to support the traditions alluded to. 



15 

winds sometimes crushed the hemlocks of the hills in their 
courses, insurgent floods sometimes poured through the t defiles 
with a tumult like the roar of a multitude, and the rival houses of 
wolf and bear, enlivened the wilderness with civil strife ; but con- 
cerning human onslaughts and insurrections, the chroniclers of 
the Six Nations are silent, and the hope of recovering the mem- 
ory of them must be forever dismissed. It remains, then, only 
to consider how the race which broke into these solitudes after 
the Revolution acquired their title to the same, and how they ac- 
complished the great work which this day beholds performed. 

The freeholders of Steuben County generally derive their titles 
from Sir William Pulteney, of England, and his heirs. Sir 
William acquired his title from Robert Morris, Morris from 
Phelps and Gorham, the latter from the State of Massachusetts, 
and that commonwealth held under the Royal Charter of James I, 
King of Great Britain. How King James became the proprietor 
of this tract of land, it would not be easy to say, unless we adopt 
the presumption which the law sometimes establishes in cases of 
unaccountable possession of chattels, and aver that he ' ' casually 
found it." 

The grants of the colonies of Massachusetts and Connecticut, 
comprised vast tracts of land extending from the Atlantic to the 
Pacific Ocean, including large portions of the present States 
of New York and Pennsylvania. The latter provinces loudly 
denied the validity of the royal grants, so far as they affected the 
territory within their boundaries, as at present settled, and the 
controversy arising from the claims of their sister provinces, was 
a fruitful source of correspondence and worse, between the rival 
claimants. In Pennsylvania it proceeded to blows. Colonists 
from Connecticut established themselves in the famous valley of 
Wyoming, and resisted with arms the edicts of the Assembly and 
the officers of the high courts of the latter commonwealth. 
Heads were bruised, bones broken, crops destroyed, settlements 
plundered, and even lives lost, and the peace of the Susquehanna 
Valley was destroyed by a feud worthy of the middle ages. In 
1774, for example, an army of 700 Pennsylvanians moved up the 
river to conquer the intruders, but at the defile of Nanticoke, 
their boats being stopped by an ice- jam, and themselves con- 



i6 

fronted by a fortification, hostilities were terminated by a rousing 
volley* from the bushes, and a rousing volley into the bushes, the 
latter killing one man.* 

The controversy between New York and Massachusetts never 
reached such deplorable virulence as that between the other two 
provinces. In the war of Revolution, private quarrels were by 
common consent suspended, and not long after that contest, the 
difficulty was adjusted. On the 16th day of December, 1786, by 
a compact entered into between the States of New York and 
Massachusetts, it was agreed that the latter State should release 
to the former all claim of sovereignty over lands lying within the 
present boundaries of the former, and that the State of New York 
should release and confirm to the State of Massachusetts the right 
of pre-emption of the soil from the Indians, of the greater part of 
New York lying west of Seneca Lake. 

On the 2istday of November, 1788, the State of Massachusetts, 
for the consideration of three hundred thousand pounds in the 
consolidated securities of that State, ($100,000,) conveyed to 
Oliver Phelps and Nathaniel Gorham, all its right, title, and in- 
terest to lands in Western New York, which now constitute the 
counties of Steuben, Yates, Otitario, part of Wayne, most of 
Monroe, a small part of Genesee and Livingston, and about one 
half of Allegany ; containing about 2,600,000 acres. The Indian 
title to this tract had been purchased by Messrs Phelps & Gor- 
ham by treaty, at a convention held in Buffalo, in July, 1788. 

The purchasers speedily caused their lands to be surveyed and 
divided into seven ranges, numbered from east to west by lines 
running north and south. The ranges, which were six miles in 
width, were subdivid into townships designed to be six miles 
square, and the townships were farther sub-divided into lots. 
That portion of the purchase which now constitutes Steuben 
County, was surveyed for Phelps & Gorham by Frederick Sax ton, 
Augustus Porter, now of Niagara Falls, Thomas Davis and 
Robert James, (or by the two first named,) in the summer of 
1789. Judge Porter, in his narrative, published in Turner's His- 
tory of the Holland Purchase, says, with regard to this survey, 
' ' While engaged in it, we made our head-quarters at Painted Post, 

*Life of Major Van Carupen. 



*7 

on the Conhocton River, at the house of old Mr. Harris and his 
son William. These two men, Mr. Goodhue, who lived near by, 
and Mr. Mead, who lived at the mouth of Mead's Creek, were 
the only persons then on the territory we were surveying. ' ' 

Mr. Phelps opened an office for the sale of land at Canandaigua. 
The fame of the Genesee Country had been spread through all 
the East. Sullivan's soldiers brought from the wilderness glow- 
ing accounts of vast meadows and luxurient orchards hidden 
amongst the forests of the Six Nations, and the adventurous men 
of New England and Pennsylvania were not backward to seek 
new homes in the fastnesses of their old enemies. Before the 
middle of November, in 1790, about 50 townships had been sold, 
the most of which were purchased by the township or half town- 
ship, by individuals or companies of farmers.* 

The settlement of Steuben County was commenced under grants 
from Messrs. Phelps and Gorham, but for convenience the whole 
history of the title to the county may be here stated. 

Messrs. Phelps and Gorham, by deed dated the 18th day of 
November, 1790, conveyed to Robert Morris of Philadelphia, (the 
patriotic merchant of Revolutionary memory) the residue of their 
lands remaining unsold, amounting to about a million and a quar- 
ter acres. 

Robert Morris, by deed dated the nth day of April, 1792, con- 
veyed to Charles Williamson about one million two hundred 
thousand acres of the Phelps and Gorham tract, which has been 
since known as the Pulteney estate. Mr. Williamson held this 
estate in secret trust for Sir William Pulteney, an English Baro- 
net, and others. In March, 1801, Mr. Williamson conveyed the 
estate formally to Sir William Pulteney, an act having been passed 
by the Legislature of New York in 1798, authorizing conveyances 
to aliens for the term of three years. This conveyance was made 
three days before the expiration of the act by its own limitation. 

Sir William Pulteney was the son of Sir James Johnstone. He 
assumed the name of Pulteney on his marriage with Mrs. Pulte- 
ney, niece of the Earl of Bath, and daughter of General Pulteney. 
He died in 1805, leaving Henrietta L,aura Pulteney, Countess of 
Bath, his only heir. Eady Bath died in 1808, intestate. The 
* Turner's Holland Purchase. 



1 8 

Pulteney estate descended to Sir John Lowther Johnstone, of 
Scotland, her cousin and heir-at-law. Sir John Lowther John- 
stone died in 1S1 1, and devised the estate in fee to Ernest Augus- 
tus Duke of Cumberland, (since King of Hanover,) Charles 
Herbert Pierrepoint, Masterton Ure and David Cathcart (L,ord 
Alloway,) in trust, nevertheless, to sell the same as speedily as 
possible, and to pay and discharge the incumbrances on his estates 
in England and Scotland, and to purchase copyhold estates adja- 
cent to his estates in Scotland. John Gordon was afterwards 
appointed a trustee of the estate, in the place of Pierrepont (the 
Earl of Manvers,) who in 1819 relinquished his trust. The pres- 
ent trustees (since the death of the King of Hanover) are Master- 
ton Ure and John Gordon. 

The policy of the proprietors and trustees has been to sell the 
lands as rapidly as possible to actual settlers. In sixty years, as 
might be expected, by far the greatest and most valuable portion 
of the State has been disposed of, but considerable tracts of wild 
laud yet remain unsold. 

The validity of the title to the Pulteney estate has never been 
the subject of judicial construction in the highest court of the 
State. A cause now before the Court of Appeals, (decided in 
favor of the proprietors in the Supreme Court,) will probably set 
at rest the question of title. 



CHAPTER II. 

STEUBEN COUNTY IMMEDIATELY BEFORE ITS SETTLEMENT — A 
JOURNEY SIXTY-FIVE YEARS AGO — THE FOREST — THE RIVERS, 
&C. — SKETCH OF BENJAMIN PATTERSON, THE HUNTER — SKIR- 
MISH AT FREELAND'S FORT — SCUFFLE WITH THE "INTER- 
PRETER" — THE WILD OX OF GENESEE FLATS- 

On the morning of Christmas-day, in the year 1787, a back- 
woodsman and an Indian issued from the door of a log cabin 
which stood half buried in snow on the point of land lying be- 
tween the Cowenisque Creek and the Tioga River, at the junction 
of those streams, and set forth on the ice of the river for a journey 
to the settlements below. They were clad according to the rude 
fashions of the frontiers and the forest, in garments partly obtain- 
ed by barter from outpost traders, and partly stripped by robbery 
from the beasts of the forest. Tomahawks and knives were stuck 
in their belts, snow shoes were bound to their feet, and knapsacks 
of provisions were lashed to their backs. Such was the equip- 
ment deemed necessary for travelers in Steuben County not a 
century ago. 

The snow lay upon the ground four full feet in depth. It was 
brought from the north in one of those night storms which in 
former days often swept down from Canadian regions and poured 
the treasures of the snowy zone on our colonial forests— storms 
which seldom visit us in modern days — as if the passage of tariff 
bills, which have cramped the operations of many heavy British- 
American firms, had made it impracticable for Polar capitalists to 
introduce their fabrics into the Commonwealth of New York with 
the profusion which was encouraged in the times of the English 
governors. 

The pioneer and his savage comrade pursued their journey on 
the ice- The Tioga was then a wild and free river. From its 
source, far up in the ' ' Magnolia hills " of the old provincial maps, 
down to its union with the equally wild and free Conhocton, no 



device of civilized man fretted its noble torrent. A single habi- 
tation of human beings stood upon its banks, the log cabin at the 
mouth of the Cowenisqne ; and that was the westernmost cabin 
of New York.* But it bore now upon its frozen surface the fore- 
runner of an unresting race of lumbermen and farmers, who in a 
few years invaded its peaceful solitudes, dammed its wild flood, 
and hewed down the lordly forests through which it flowed. The 
travellers kept on their course beyond the mouth of the Cauisteo 
to the Painted Post. Here they expected to find the cabin of one 
Harris, a trader, where they might have lodgings for the night, 
and, if necessary for the comfort of the savage breast, a draught 
from "the cup which cheers (and also) inebriates." On their 
arrival at the head of the Chemung, however, they found that the 
cabin had been destroyed by fire. The trader had either been 
murdered by the Indians, or devoured by wild beasts, or else he 
had left the country, and Steuben County was in consequence 
depopulated. 

Disappointed in this hope, the two travellers continued their 
journey on the ice as far as Big Flats. Here night overtook them. 
They kindled a fire on the bank of the river, and laid them down 
to sleep. The air was intensely cold. It was one of those clear, 
still, bitter nights, when the moon seems an iceberg, and the stars 
are bright and sharp like hatchets. The savage rolled himself up 
in his blanket, lay with his back to the fire, and did not so much 
as stir till the morning ; but his companion, though framed of 
that stout stuff out of which backwoodsmen are built, could not 
sleep for the intensity of the cold. At midnight a pack of wolves 
chased a deer from the woods to the river, seized the wretched 
animal on the ice, tore it to pieces and devoured it within ten 
rods of the encampment. Early in the morning the travellers 
arose and went their way to the settlements below, the first of 
which was Newtown, on the sight of the present village of 
Elniira. 

Such is one of the earliest glimpses of our county granted us. 
Journies are performed in rather a different manner now ! The 
incidents of the trip sound oddly enough to the ear of the modern 

* In strict truth, the cabin stood in Pennsylvania, a few rods from the New 
York line. 



21 

traveller — the excursion on snow shoes — the possible destruction 
of the village of Painted Post by the Indians — the encampment 
and night fire under the trees by the river bank, on a stinging 
Christmas night, while frost-bitten wolves regaled the ears of the 
travellers with dismal howling ! The backwoodsman was Samuel 
Baker, a New Englander, afterwards well known to our citizeus 
as Judge Baker, of Pleasant Valley. 

This is a winter scene. The Descriptive and Historical ' ' Cit- 
izen " gives in his sketch* a summer picture, — "a picture of our 
county as it was a few summers before the irruption of the back- 
woodsmen ; for this, the figure of our rugged home arrayed in its 
ancient and barbarous yet picturesque and noble garb, is one 
which the reflecting citizen will sometime contemplate in imagin- 
ation, with pleasure, and not without some degree of wonder. 

"On a summer's day, shortly after the close of the War of 
Revolution, let the observing citizen stand with me on an exceed- 
ingly high mountain and survey the land. It is a vast solitude, 
with scarce a sound to break the reigning silence but the splash- 
ing of the brooks in their defiles, and the brawling of the rivers at 
the rifts, or perhaps the creaking of sulky old hemlocks as the 
light wind stirs their branches or sways their tottering trunks 
slowly to and fro. What a noble forest is this, covering the val- 
leys and the high, rounded hills, and the steep sides of the wind- 
ing gulfs, and the crests of the successive ranges that rise above 
each other till the outline of a blue and curving barrier is traced 
against the sky. For ages upon ages has this land been a wilder- 
ness. Savages have hunted in it. Storms have passed over it, 
and its history would present but a record of wild beasts slain, of 
trees uprooted, and of the passage of terrible whirlwinds which 
broke wide lanes through the forest and overthrew the timbers of 
whole hill-sides. See how the three rivers flow through groves 
of elm and willow, while the white sycamores, standing on unmo- 
lested islands, raise aloft their long branches where the cranes 
rest with the plunder of the shallows. Free rivers are these, flow- 
ing joyously through the channels provided for them of old, 
shackled by no dams, insulted by no bridges, tormented by no 

* " Descriptive and Historical Sketch of Steuben County," — (MS.) politely 
placed at the disposal of the editor of this volume. 



22 

saw-mills. They bear with gladness the occasional canoe of the 
people that gave them their sounding names ; they give drink to 
the heated deer, to the panther, and the wallowing bear, — dis- 
gusted by no base-born beasts of the yoke wading their stony 
fords, nor by geese swimming in their clear waters, nor by swine 
lounging in the warm mud of the eddies. See, also, the lakes 
sleeping in the hollows prepared for them anciently, their bluffs 
and beaches occupied even to the water's edge with forest trees, 
while solitary loons and fleets of wild fowl cruise on their waters, 
scared by neither the wheels of the passing steamer, nor by the 
whistling bullets of fowlers. Behold too the creeks, the brooks, 
the torrents, leaping down from the highlands like hearty young 
mountaineers ; while in the ravines through which they brawl the 
great pines stand as if dreamiug, unconscious that their gigantic 
trunks contain spars and saw-logs. 

" But the forest is not destitute of an active populace. Bears 
sit growling at the windows of their towers in the hollow trees ; 
painted catamounts lurk in the glens ; panthers crouch on the 
low branches of the oaks ; elk and many thousand deer are stand- 
ing in the ponds or browsing in the thickets ; while hungry gangs 
of wolves rove at dusk through the groves with dismal howling. 
And these are not the only citizens of the wood. There we see 
the myriads of squirrels, the wood-fowls whistling and drumming 
in the thickets, the old and clumsy sons of the she-bear tumbling 
in the leaves in their awkward play, the comical raccoons frolick- 
ing in the tree-tops, while the wise and sober woodchuck goes 
forth alone, and the otter cruises in the still waters of the streams. 

" All these things, let the observing citizen mark, — these far 
rolling forests, these silent lakes and wild rivers, these savage 
creeks and torrents, these gorges and wooded glens, these deep- 
worn valleys and the abrupt ranges that bound them, and the 
promontories that jut from the everchanging outlines of the 
ranges, — all as they were in the ancient time before I begin the 
story of their conquest, — a half melancholy story ; for who can 
think how these solitudes were broken up and these flue forests 
mangled without a half-regretful thought ? 

' ' The wilderness is doomed. Even now as we stand on the 
mountain the men who will invade it are astir. Down on the 



23 

Susquehanna uneasy farmers are already working their way 
upward in broad barges ; uneasy New Englanders are already 
launching canoes on the Unadilla, which will find their way 
hither. Even now Scotchmen, Irishmen, and Englishmen are 
tossing on the seas who in a few years will live in these valleys, 
farmers and tradesmen, and even supervisors, Justices of the 
Peace, and Judges. Barbarism, drawing its fantastic blanket 
over its shoulders, and clutching its curiously- wrought tomahawk, 
must withdraw to other solitudes, jingling its brazen ornaments 
and whooping*as it goes." 

Such was our County as seen by the " Citizen " before the year 
1787. There are a few additional facts which escaped his notice 
on the " exceedingly high mountain," which may with propriety 
be mentioned before proceeding to the narration of events con- 
nected with the settlement. 

This whole region, — especially that part of it occupied by the 
valleys of the Conhocton and Canisteo, — was of old one of the 
best hunting grounds belonging to the Six Nations, and was 
visited in the winter and autumn by large parties of Seneca In- 
dians, who came from their villages on the Genesee for the 
destruction of game. It was a royal park indeed — and yet of 
course not such a park as the elegant deer-folds of Europe thus 
named — but rather like those rugged and unkempt Asiatic parks, 
where the Nimrods and Cyruses of old, with their peers and cap- 
tains, made war upon lions and tigers, and boars ; only here were 
unfortunately neither boars, nor tigers, nor lions, and, to speak 
truly, but shabby substitutes for such noble game. It was only 
when the wild huntsman grappled with the wounded panther or 
scuffled with the angry bear, or dodged the horns of the furious 
stag, that the perils of the chase deserved record with the exploits 
of those worthies of old, who pricked lions in the jungles with 
their Assyrian pikes. Still, of very rude and ugly beasts there 
was no scarcity. Of bears and panthers there were quite as many 
as the County could support even under a system of direct taxa- 
tion for that purpose, and when we take into account beside these, 
the large and happy communities of rattlesnakes and catamounts 
which flourished in eligible localities, there is no reason why the 



2 4 

patriotic citizen should feel mortified at our county's ancient 
census returns. 

There are certain facts with regard to the rivers which do not 
appear in the Citizen's " Sketch." Before the settlement of the 
county, the rivers were much deeper, stronger, and steadier, than 
they are at the present day. In modern times they are notoriously 
unreliable servants of the people — sometimes reducing the saw- 
mills to half-rations, and confining the eels to limited elbow- 
room ; anon rising above their banks, flooding the flats, sweeping 
away piles of lumber, and testing the labors of the commissioners 
of highways and bridges, as is the undoubted right of every river 
in this republican land. The destruction of the forests has caused 
the drying up of multitudes of little springs which formerly, by 
their penny contributions to the great sinking-fund, swelled appre- 
ciably the treasures of the streams. Freshets can be had on 
shorter notice now than then, but they are of shorter duration. 
Then, the snow melting in the woods slowly, caused the March 
and April floods to be deliberate and of long continuance. Now, 
the snow falling upon bare hills and open farms, melts rapidly at 
sunshine and shower, rushes into the ravines and swells the creeks 
with violent and short-lived freshets. Many channels which were 
formerly the beds of petty, but perennial brooks, are now " dry 
runs," except after rains, when they are filled with powerful tor- 
rents. The State Geologist apprehends serious inconvenience 
from the failure of water, if the destruction of the forest is con- 
tinued in the future as extravagant^ as during the last fifty years. 

Our ancient rivers, in addition to their superiority in depth 
and power to the shallow streams which to-day wind through our 
valleys, were far more correct in their habits and firm in their 
principles than the modern waters — not being so easily persuaded 
to indulge in irregularities, and not taking advantage of every 
winter-thaw, to rise up, and go off on a " bender," as it were, 
with the creeks and runnels, like a crew of light-headed young- 
sters. And yet it is not to be supposed that they refrained en- 
tirely from such extravagances. Early settlers well remember 
how the lower valley of the Tioga was flooded from hill to hill 
fully a mile, deep enough, almost, at the shallowist, to swim a 
horse ; and how men, near Painted Post, paddled their canoes 



25 

in the roads for miles. This was about forty-five years ago. 

The rivers were furthermore greviously afflicted with flood-wood. 
They bore down with their strongest waters annual tribute to the 
Susquehanna, of trees, broken trunks, and enormous roots — the 
bullion of the forest — like savage chiefs of the mountain, bearing 
gifts to the prince of the plains, of rough ores, unwrought gems, 
and the feathers of strange birds. In modern days we continue 
this tribute, but in different form, as evidence of our improved 
state — coining the uncooth bullion into boards or huge ingots of 
timber. Notwithstanding the great quantities of flood-wood from 
which the rivers freed themselves by the occasional floods, there 
were yet large masses of this raft which the freshet did not loosen, 
or at most, shifted from point to point. The two lesser rivers 
were fairly strangled by these dams. Navigation, for any craft 
heavier than the birch canoe of the pagan, was utterly impracti- 
cable. After the settlement of the county, these collections of 
flood-wood were chopped and burned away at a considerable pub- 
lic expense. Something has been done, too, toward straightening 
the navigable streams. Upon the whole, it would appear that our 
county contained in old times, a very heedless and lawless family 
of waters. The rivers were badly snarled. It is one of the most 
pleasing results of a judicious civilization that these tangled tor- 
rents have been combed out smoothly, and that the mountain 
creeks, which then like wild colts came leaping through the ra- 
vines, have at last been caught in huge timber traps so ingenious- 
ly contrived w T ith bulkheads and flooms, that there was really no 
chance of escape for these lively streams, and have been given to 
understand that all this capering through the glens, and leaping 
over the rocks, might be excused when the poor Indian who 
knew nothing about hydraulics held the land, but that they must 
now come into the harness and carry saw-logs and turn under- 
shot wheels. 

Considering all these things — the forests, the hills, the shaded 
islands, the wild beasts, and the untamed rivers — our county ap- 
pears to have been truly a fastness of barbarism. Its ancient 
tenants did not yield it without a long battle, fought inch by inch 
with fire and steel. Mountains and rivers formed a league. The 
mountains displayed the fortitude of martyrs. When beset by 



26 

merciless farmers, they resolutely refused to give up their treas- 
ures. Dumb and obstinate they were stripped of their raiment, 
they were flayed, they were torn with plows and harrows, they 
were scorched with fire — like Jews in the castles of the old barons 
— and only surrendered their hidden wealth after the most dread- 
ful tortures. The rivers, with equal fidelity, resisted the inroads 
of the back-woodsmen. The " Citizen " says, "If the rivers of 
this county were anciently populated with any tribe of Iudian bo- 
gles, or water-imps, (and there is no good reason for supposing 
that they were not,) I should say that these invisible citizens 
mustered for a last stand, in defence of their homes. They built 
barricades of flood-wood, they piled up battlements of great roots, 
they pulled down mighty sycamores to fortify the rifts. But they 
were overpowered like the insurgents of Paris. Their barricades 
were broken with axes or destroyed by fire, and the fleets of the 
pioneers pushed their way up the rivers by degrees, driving before 
them these unlucky little aborigines. ' ' 

There were many patches of laud on the river flats, which were 
free from timber. At the north of the Canisteo there was an 
" open flat" of some two hundred acres. In the upper valley of 
that river there was a much larger one. There were open flats 
near the Painted Post and up the Tioga, and a single one on the 
Conhocton — -the fine meadows south of the village of Bath. 

There was at this time a man living near Northumberland, in 
Pennsylvania, who afterwards became a noted cttizen of this 
county ; and although his connection with it did not begin till 
after the first settlements were made, yet, for convenience, a brief 
sketch of him may be introduced. 

BENJAMIN PATTERSON, THE HUNTER- 

Of great renown, towards the close of the last century, through- 
out all the hill country of the West, was Ben Patterson, the hun- 
ter. From the mid-branches of the Susquehanna to the most 
north-western waters of that river, there was not one of greater 
fame. Courageous and energetic of spirit, and powerful of frame, 
he explored the forests of Pennsylvania, roved over the ridges 
and through the ravines of the Alleganies, navigated untried 



27 

rivers, discovered mines and hidden valleys, gave names to creeks 
and mountains, and guided adventurers through the wilderness. 

Sometimes he was a hunter ; sometimes an Indian fighter ; 
sometimes a spy ; sometimes a Moses to despairing emigrants ; 
sometimes forrester to backwoods barons. He had been asso- 
ciated with all the noted characters of the frontier ; with Gurty, 
the renegade ; with Murphy, the runner ; with Van Campen, the 
ranger ; with Hammond, the fighter. He knew the farmers of 
Wyoming, the riflemen of the West Branch, and the warriors of 
Niagara. To bears, panthers, and wolves, to elk, deer, and bea- 
ver, he was an Alaric. The number of these beasts that fell be- 
fore his rifle almost passes account. In the latter years of his 
life, when an old man, living on his farm by the Tioga, and game 
began to become scarce, he thought it necessary to put a narrow 
limit to his annual destruction of deer, and in each year there- 
after laid up his rifle when he had killed an hundred. He was 
not a mere destroyer of wild beasts, but a man of keen observa- 
tion, of remarkable powers of memory, of intelligence, of judg- 
ment, and withal of strict integrity. He possessed great powers 
of narration. Not only children and rough men of the frontier, 
but men of learning, listened hour after hour to his thousand 
tales. The late Chief Justice Spencer, when Circuit Judge, once 
met him at the Mud Creek tavern, in this county, and was so in- 
terested with his graphic descriptions of wild scenery and wood 
life, that he sat up all night with him engaged in conversation ; 
and always after, when holding court at Bath, sent for the hunter, 
provided for him at the hotel, and passed in his company a great 
part of his time off the bench. 

Mr. Patterson was born in L,oudou county, in the State of 
Virginia, in the year 1759, and died in 1830, at Painted Post, 
having been for the last thirty-five years of his life a citizen of 
this county. His mother was a cousin of Daniel Boone, the first 
of the Kentuckians. Early in life he removed with the family of 
his step-father to Pennsylvania, and passed the greater part of 
his youth in that State, though living for a time again in Virginia. 
It was on the Susquehanna frontiers that his hunting tastes were 
formed and developed. 

During the Revolutionary war he served in a rifle-corps, organ- 



28 

ized for the defence of the borders, and in this perilous service 
met with many adventures. At the skirmish of Freeling's Fort, 
in 1779, he and his younger brother Robert (who afterwards was 
also a citizen of this county) fought in the party of Captain Haw- 
kins Boone, and narrowly escaped with their lives. Freeling's 
Fort, on the West Branch of the Susquehanna, had been taken 
by a party of Tories and Indains, the former under the command 
of McDonald, a noted loyalist of Try on county, in New York, 
and the latter led by Hiakatoo (the husband of Mary Jemison 
' 'the white woman.") Captain Boone's party of thirty-two volun- 
teered to scout in the neighborhood of the captured fort, and to 
attack the enemy if it could be advantageously done. They 
advanced cautiously, and succeeded in concealing themselves in a 
cluster of bushes overlooking the camp of the enemy. Both 
tories and Indians were engaged in cooking or eating, while a 
single sentinel, a fine tall savage, with a blanket drawn over his 
head, walked slowly to and fro. Boone's men commenced firing 
by platoons of six. The sentry sprang into the air with a whoop 
and fell dead. The enemy yelling frightfully ran to arms and 
opened a furious but random fire at their unseen foes. Their bul- 
lets rattled through the bushes where Boone's men lay hid, but 
did no mischief. The slaughter of Indians and Tories was dread- 
ful. The thirty -two rangers firing coolly and rapidly by sixes, 
with the unerring aim of frontiersmen, shot down one hundred and 
and fifty (so the story runs) before the enemy broke and fled. 
Boone's men, with strange indiscretion, rushed from their covert 
in pursuit, and immediately exposed their weakness of numbers. 
Hiakatoo with his Indians made a circuit, and attacked them in 
the rear, while McDonald turned upon their front. They were 
surrounded. "Save yourself men as you can," cried Captain 
Boone. The enemy closed with tomahawks and spears- This 
part of the fight occurred in the midst of the woods. The rangers 
broke through their foes, and fled with such success that many 
escaped, but their captain and more than half of his men were 
killed. Robert Patterson, who was very swift of foot, was fol- 
lowed several miles to the clearings of another fort by three or 
four fleet Indians. Seeing that he would escape from them, his 
pursuers reserved their fire till he should clamber over the fence 



2 9 

which enclosed the clearing, when they might aim at him with 
greater certainty than while he was running through the woods. 
He however sprang to the top rail at a bound and escaped. The 
bullets struck the wood just under his feet. Benjamin Pat- 
terson, in the meantime, had hidden himself under a log over- 
grown with vines or briars. The Indians ransacked the woods 
all around, and passed so near his hiding place that he could touch 
their moccasins with his ramrod. Many times he thought'himself 
discovered, and was on the point of springing forth to die fight- 
ing, but the Indians gradually wandered away from his vicinity. 
The last straggler returning from the pursuit carried the dripping 
scalp of the only red-haired man in the party, which he was 
twirling around his finger with great delight. "I was strongly 
tempted to shoot that fellow," said Patterson, but on reflecting 
that the main body of the Indians was not distant, he thought it 
prudent to deny himself that pleasure. At night he escaped to 
Boone's Fort. 

The enemy retook the prisoners of Freeling's Fort, and carried 
away many captives to Niagara. Patterson, in a company of 
rangers, pursued. They believed that the Indians had a great 
many wounded with them, for at the deserted encampments bush- 
els of slippery-elm bark were found, which had been pouuded in 
preparing draughts and dressings.* The enemy struck over from 
Pine Creek to the Tioga, and passed up the valley of the Conhoc- 
ton to Niagara. 

Patterson was engaged throughout the war in the perilous 
frontier-services ; sometimes scouting with the wary and fearless 
captains of the borders ; sometimes skirmishing in the forests ; 
sometimes devising plots and counter plots against the secret and 
wise foes who hid in the dark places of the wilderness, and came 
and went like the lightning. At the close of the war he was at 
liberty to give himself up to his roving and hunting propensities. 

* Captain Montour, the chief who was buried at the Painted Post, was in 
McDonald's band, and died from wounds received at Freeling's or Freeland's 
Fort. He was said to be a son of Queen Catherine of Seneca Lake. There 
is no detailed account of this skirmish in any accessible book with which to 
compare Patterson's story. It is briefly alluded to in the biographies of Brant 
and Van Campen, the only authorities at hand. 



3© 

He explored the region north of the West Branch, passed up 
through the Genesee country, spied out the land, and guided emi- 
grants, travellers and adventurers through the woods ; shooting 
always wherever he went. He was the guide of Talleyrand in 
an excursion through the wild country, and at a later period 
piloted another French gentleman for many weeks around the 
wilderness. The latter was agent for a company of French emi- 
grants, then residing at Philadelphia, who desired to make a set- 
tlement in some choice place on the outside of civilization. The 
Frenchman was a merry companion, and took to wild life with a 
good grace. With a negro servant he followed the hunter over a 
great extent of country, learning to swim and shoot, bathing in 
the lakes, sleeping on the ground, and learning backwoods science 
with much zeal. The emigrants, it is said, were sadly taken in 
by the land speculators who sold them at a great price, an armful 
of mountains not worth eighteen pence. 

The hunter's home was for many years on the West Branch, 
near Northumberland. After the war, the region thereabout began 
to be overrun to a destructive rate with farmers, who laid waste 
the homes of the bear and the wolf with the most sickening bar- 
barity. The forests were again and again decimated, till his old 
hunting grounds, disfigured with wheat fields, corn fields and 
potato fields, presented a melancholy scene of devastation. The 
wild beasts quite lost heart, and began to retire to deeper solitudes, 
and the hunter determined to remove his household elsewhere, 
into a land as yet unmolested by plowmen and wood-choppers. 
In the year 1796, he boated his goods up the river to Painted 
Post, and kept for seven years the old tavern at Knoxville. At 
the end of that time, he moved up on the farm now occupied by 
one of his sons, two miles above the village of Painted Post, on 
the Tioga. It was quite a productive farm, yielding a crop of 
twenty-two wolves, nine panthers, bears a few, besides deer, shad 
and salmon uncounted. 

He was of medium stature, and squarely built. When in his 
prime, he possessed great strength and activity, and was famed as 
"a very smart man." He never encountered a man who got the 
better of him in a scuffle. His acquaintance with the famous 



3i 

interpreter, Horatio Jones,* commenced in true frontier chivalry- 
A party of Indians, with a few white men, had gathered around 
a camp-fire near the Genesee, when for some reason, the savages 
began to insult and abuse an individual who was standing by. At 
length they threw him into the fire. The man scrambled out. The 
Indians. again seized him and threw him into the fire. Patterson, 
who stood near, a perfect stranger to the company, sprang for- 
ward, saying to the tormentors " Don't burn the man alive !" and 
dragged him off the burning logs. Two or three of this genial 
party, displeased at the interruption of their diversions, immedi- 
ately assaulted the hunter, but relinquished the honor of whipping 
him to Jones, who stepped forward to settle the affair in person. 
Jones was also famed as a " smart man, ' ' being powerful, well 
skilled in athletic sports, and able to maintain his authority over 
the Indians by strength of arm. Before the fight had lasted many 
minutes, the savages standing around began to whisper in their 
own language, " He has got his match this time," with perhaps 
some little satisfaction, for the Interpreter used a rod of iron, and 
sometimes banged his people about without ceremony. Jones 
was badly beaten, and kept his wigwam for several days. At the 
trial of the Indians, Sundown and Curly-eye, at Bath, in 1825, 
(or about that time,) Jones, who was present as interpreter, 
laughed heartily. over the matter, and sent his compliments to the 
old hunter. 

He was of course a crack shot, and carried a rifle which killed 
where vulgar guns smoked in vain. In one of his excursions 
with Capt. Williamson, he found a wild ox roving over the vast 
Genesee Flats, which, by his sagacity and swiftness, baffled all 
the efforts of the Indians to destroy him. This beast was the last 
of several domestic oxen, which at times strayed to these marvel- 
lous meadows, and became wild as buffaloes. They lived like the 
cattle of Eden in the luxurious pasture of the flats during the 
summer, and in the winter by thrusting their noses through the 
snow, ate the frozen grass below, and sustained life quite com- 
fortably. All had been slain but the one which was now grazing 

* A Pennsylvanian. Taken prisoner by the Indians when eighteen years of 
age ; he became, for his courage, strength and spirit, a favorite with his cap- 
tors, and gained great influence over them. 



32 

in that great field, and his faculties had been so sharpened by the 
relapse to barbarism, that it was quite impossible for even the craft 
of the Indians to circumvent him. His scent was almost as keen 
as the elk's ; his eyesight was so quick and suspicious, that before 
the red men could skulk within gunshot of him, he shook his 
great white horns and raced off through the high grass like an 
antelope. Capt. Williamson charged Patterson to lay low the 
head of this famous beast. The hunter crept along carefully 
while the ox was grazing, and when it raised its head and stared 
around the plain to discern an enemy, lay flat in the grass. Either 
his patience or his skill was greater than that of the Indians, for 
he completely out-generalled the wary animal, got within fair 
shooting range of it, fired and brought it down. The savages set up 
a great whooping, and crowded around the fallen ox as though it 
were a horned horse, or a sea-elephant. One of his noble horns, 
suitably carved and ornamented, afterwards hung at the hunter's 
side as a powder-horn. 

He preserved in his old age all the characteristics of the hunter, 
and always found his chief pleasures in the vigorous pursuits to 
which his youth had been devoted. When attending court at 
Bath, as a juryman, he was in the habit of going out in the morn- 
ing before anybody was stirring, to the little lake, east of the vil- 
age, and shooting a deer before breakfast. It is to be regretted 
that the reminiscences we have collected of this far-known char- 
acter, and recorded in this and in succeeding chapters of this 
volume, are so scanty. More of the thousand tales, which he told 
of the "old times" to boys and neighbors and travellers, might 
doubtless be gathered even yet ; but had they been taken from his 
own lips in his lifetime, they would have formed a volume of 
reminiscence and adventure of rare interest. There would have 
been, besides, a gain in accuracy ; for what we have collected were 
told twenty or thirty years ago to youngsters. Whatever was 
told by the old hunter himself was to be relied upon, for he was 
carefully and strictly truthful. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE SETTLEMENTS MADE UNDER THE PURCHASE BY PHELPS 
AND GORHAM — PAINTED POST — THE FIRST SETTLER — THE SET- 
TLEMENT OF THE UPPER VALLEY OF THE CANISTEO— THE 
CANISTEO FLATS — LIFE IN THE VALLEY — A WRESTLING 
MATCH — CAPTAIN JOHN — OLD ENEMIES — MAJOR VAN CAMPEN 
AND MOHAWK — A DISCOMFITED SAVAGE — CAPTURE OF A SAW- 
MILL — THE LOWER CANISTEO VALLEY — COL. LINDLY — A 
DEER-SLAYER IMMORTALIZED. 

THE OLD TOWN OF PAINTED POST. 

In the summer of 1779, a numerous party of Tories and Indians, 
under the command of a Loyalist named McDonald and Hiakatoo, 
a renowned Seneca war-chief, returned to the north by way of 
Pine creek, the Tioga, and the Conhocton, from an incursion 
among the settlements on the west branch of the Susquehanna. 
They had suffered a severe loss in a conflict with the borderers, and 
brought with them many wounded. Their march was also en- 
cumbered by many prisoners, men, women and children, taken 
at Freeling's Fort. A party of rangers followed them a few days, 
journeying into the wilderness, and found at their abandoned en- 
campment abundant proof of the manfulness with which the 
knives and rifles of the frontier had been used in repelling its foes, 
in the heaps of bark and roots which had been pounded or steeped 
in preparing draughts and dressings for the wounded warriors. 
Under the elms of the confluence of the Tioga and Conhocton, 
Captain Montour, a half-breed, a fine young chief, a gallant war- 
rior and a favorite with his tribe, died of his wounds. He was a 
son of the famous Queen Catharine. His comrades buried him 
by the river side, and planted above his grave a post on which 
was painted various symbols and rude devices. This monument 
was known throughout the Genesee Forest as the Painted Post. 



34 

It was a landmark well known to all the Six Nations, and was 
often visited 03' their braves and chieftains.* 

At the Painted Post, the first habitation of civilized man erected 
in Steuben county, was built by William Harris, an Indian 
Trader. Harris was a Peunsylvanian, and not long after the 
close of the Revolutionary war pushed up the Chemung with a 
cargo of Indian goods, to open a traffic with the hunting parties 
of the Six Nations, which resorted at certain seasons to the north- 
western branches of the Susquehanna. A canoe or a pack-horse 
sufficed at that time to transport the yearly merchandise of the 
citizens of our county. Sixty-five years afterwards, an armada 
of canal boats and a caravan of cars hardly performed this labor. 
The precise date of Harris's arrival is unknown. Judge Baker, 
late of Pleasant Valley, found the trader established at his post in 
the spring of 1787. On Christmas night following, he went down 
to the Painted Post, and finding the cabin burned and the trader 
missing, he inferred that the latter had perhaps been killed by his 
customers — a disaster by no means unlikely to befall a merchant 
in a region where the position of debtor was much more pleasant 
and independent than that of creditor, especially if the creditor 
had the misfortune to be white and civilized. Harris, however, 
had met with no calamity. On the contrary, his intercourse with 
the Indians was of a very friendly and confidential character. 
They rendered him much valuable assistance in setting up busi- 

* This account of the origin of the Painted Post was given to Benjamin 
Patterson, the Hunter, by a man named Taggart, who was carried to Fort 
Niagara a prisoner by McDonald's party, and was a witness of the burial of 
Captain Montour, or at least was in the encampment at the mouth of the 
Tioga at the time of his death. Col. Harper, of Harpersfield, the well known 
officer of the frontier militia of New York in the Revolution, informed Judge 
Knox, of Knoxville in this county, that the Painted Post was erected over 
the grave of a chief who was wounded at the battle of the Hog-back, and 
brought in a canoe to the head of the Chemung, where he died. At all 
events it was well understood by the early settlers, that this monument was 
erected in memory of some distinguished warrior who had been wounded in 
one of the border battles of the Revolution, and afterwards died at this place. 
The post stood for many years after the settlement of the county, and the 
story goes that it rotted down at the butt, and was preserved in the bar-room 
of a tavern till about the year 1810, and then disappeared unaccountably. 
It is also said to have been swept away in a freshet. 



35 

hess, not of course by endorsing his paper, or advancing funds on 
personal security ; but by helping him to erect his warehouse, 
and patronising him in the handsomest manner afterwards. They 
even carried the logs out of which the cabin was built, on their 
shoulders, to the proposed site of the edifice which was after all, 
to speak with strict etymology, a species of endorsement. 

The savages manifested much zeal in promoting the establish- 
ment of a trading post at the head of the Chemung, and indeed 
it was a matter of as much consequence at that time as the build- 
ing of a Railroad Depot is in modern days. Before that, the citi- 
zens of the county were obliged to go to Tioga Point, nearly fifty 
miles below, to buy their gunpowder, liquors, knives, bells, brads, 
and jews-harps ; and the proposal of Harris to erect a bazaar at 
the Painted Post, for the sale of these articles, was of as vital concern 
to the interests of the county as at the present day an offer of the 
government to establish a university in Tyrone or an observatory 
in Troupsburg would be. It was a great day for the county 
when the trader's cabin was finished, and his wares unpacked. 
Then the sachem might buy scalping knives and hatchets on the 
bank of his own river ; the ladies of the wilderness could go shop- 
ping without paddling their canoes to the Susquehanna, and the 
terrible warriors of the Six Nations, as they sat of an evening 
under their own elm trees, smoking pipes bought at the " People's 
Store," hard by, forgot their cunning ; when some renowned Cap- 
tain Shiverscull, a grim and truculent giant, steeped to his 
elbows in the blood of farmers, and scarred with bullets and 
tomahawks like a target, sat upon a log, soothing his savage 
breast with the melodies of a jews-harp, or winding around that 
bloody finger, which had so often been twisted in the flaxen 
scalp-locks of Pennsylvanian children, a string of beads, bought 
for his own ugly little cub, that lay asleep in the wigwam of 
Genesee. 

At the time of Judge Baker's visit, Harris was only temporarily 
absent. He afterwards returned to Painted Post with his son, 
and lived there a few years, when he again removed to Pennsyl- 
vania. One or two others are sometimes pointed out as the first 
settlers of the county ; but evidence, which must be regarded as 
reliable and decisive, proves that the first civilized resident was 



36 

William Harris. It is possible, indeed, that before his advent 
some straggling adventurer may have wandered hither, built him 
a lodge, perhaps planted corn on the open flats, and afterwards 
strayed to parts unknown, leaving no trace of his existence. 
There have always been, on the frontiers, eccentric geniuses, to 
whom such a line of conduct was no strange thing. There have 
always been, on the frontiers, a few vagabonds, who should have 
been born wolves, who forsake civilized homes and join the In- 
dians, and are only hindered from living with the bears in their 
hollow trees, by the refusal of these sensible monsters to fraternize 
with such loafers. Hermits, hunters and vagabonds find their 
way into strange places, and it is by no means impossible that 
some pleasant island or open flat may have harbored one of these 
outlaws before any other wanderer, laying claim to civilization, 
smote our forests with the all-conquering axe. No such Robin- 
son Crusoe, however, presents himself as a candidate for historical 
honors, and it is, upon the whole, improbable that any such pre- 
ceded the trader, or if he did, that he enjoyed his solitude a great 
while unmolested. The "Man Friday" he would have been 
likely to catch here would most probably have caught hint, and 
whisked his scalp off without winking. 

Harris was a trader and did not cultivate the soil. Frederick 
Calkins, a Vermonter, was the first farmer of Steuben. He made 
his settlement near the head of the Chimney Narrows, in 1788. 
After living there alone for a time, he returned to the east for his 
family. During this absence, Phelps and Gorham's surveyors 
made head-quarters at Painted Post, which accounts for the omis- 
sion of his name in Judge Porter's narrative, quoted in the last 
chapter. George Goodhue followed Mr. Calkins in a year or 
two. 

Township number two in the second range, was purchased of 
Phelps and Gorham, in 1790, by six proprietors, Frederick 
Calkins, Justus Wolcott, of Eastern New York, Ephraim Patter- 
son, of Connecticut, Silas Wood, Caleb Gardener and Peleg 
Gorton. The price paid for the township was eight cents per 
acre. 

The old town of Painted Post comprised the present towns of 
Hornby, Campbell, Erwin, Painted Post, Caton and Iyindley. 



37 

The earliest settlers along the Chemung and Conhocton were the 
six proprietors (excepting Silas Wood), Eli and Eldad Mead, 
(1790,) David and Jonathan Cook, of New Jersey, (1790,) Judge 
Knox, of Eastern New York, (1793,) Benjamin Eaton, Elias 
Williams, Henry McCormiek, Hezekiah Thurber, Bradford 
Eggleston, Samuel Colegrove, John Berry and others. John 
Winters, a famous hunter, settled there at an early day, and fam- 
ilies named Rowan, Waters, Van Wye, Turner, McCullick, etc. 

Mr. Eli Mead was the first Supervisor of the town, and went on 
foot to Canandaigua, to attend the meeting of the Board of Super- 
visors of Ontario county. 

Gen. McClure, speaking of the early settlers of that neighbor- 
hood, mentions " a man by the name of Fuller, who kept the old 
Painted Post Hotel. That ancient house of entertainment, *"or 
tavern (as such were then called) was composed of round logs, 
one story high, and if I mistake not was divided into two apart- 
ments. This house was well patronized by its neighbors as by 
travellers from afar. All necessarily stopped here for refresh- 
ment, as well for themselves as for their horses. Fuller, the 
landlord, was a good natured, slow and easy kind of man, but 
his better half, Nellie, was a thorough -going, smart, good-looking 
woman, and was much admired by gentlemen generally. To the 
wearied traveller, nothing can be more agreeable than a pleasant, 
obliging landlady. There were other respectable families 
settled at Painted Post, not many years after, (1794,) 
Thomas McBurney, Esq., Capt. Samuel Erwin, Frank and 
Arthur, his brothers, Capt. Howell Bull, John E- Evans, an 
Englishman, and others." 

A mill was built on the Post Creek, near the Narrows, by Mr. 
Payne and Col. Henderson, as early as 1793 or 1794. This mill 
is described by the few who remember it, as having been mainly 
built of logs "so that you could drive a pig through it." 

The first establishment for the sale of goods, to civilized men, 
was kept by Benjamin Eaton. He went for his first stock to 
Wattles' Ferry (now Unadilla village) in a canoe, with a man and 
a boy, (Mr. Samuel Cook, of Campbelltown.) At that place he 
purchased another canoe, loaded his fleet with goods and returned 
to Painted Post. 



38 

Col. Arthur Erwin, the ancestor of a large family bearing his 
name, emigrated from Ireland before the Revolution. During the 
war he served in the American army. He resided in Bucks 
County, Pennsylvania, and became the proprietor of a large landed 
estate. He was shot dead through the window of a log house at 
Tioga Point, in 1792, by an ejected squatter who escaped. 

Hon. William Steele, a well known and highly respected cit- 
izen of Painted Post, removed from New Jersey in 18 19. He 
served in the war of the Revolution, and was severely wounded 
and made prisoner at sea in 1780. In 1785 he was appointed clerk 
in the old Board of Treasury, and in 1794 he commanded a troop 
of horse and aided in suppressing the insurrection near Pitts- 
burgh. He died in 1851. {Obituary notice in Cor?ii?7g Journal.) 

THE SETTLEMENT OF THE UPPER VALLEY OF THE CANISTEO. 

A party of boatmen attached to General Sullivan's army in the 
invasion of the Genesee in 1779, while awaiting in the Chemung 
River the return of their commander and his column from the 
north, pushed up the river as far as the Painted Post, out of curios- 
ity to know how the land lay on the northwestern branches of the 
Susquehanna. Among the soldiers of Sullivan was Uriah Ste- 
phens, Jr., a Pennsylvanian. He believing, from the report of 
the boatmen, that some fertile flat might lie among those northern 
hills where frontiersmen, not bountifully provided for in the lower 
valleys, might found settlements and thrive for a time on venison 
and hominy, determined after the war to seek such a place and to 
emigrate thither. 

Mr. Stephens belonged to a numerous family of New England 
descent, which had settled at an early day in the Wyoming re- 
gion ; and they, with other families which afterwards joined them 
in the settlement of the Upper Canisteo, suffered in the attack of 
the Indians and Tories on that ill-fated district in 1778. One of 
the oldest surviving members of the family was carried in the 
arms of a neighbor (James Hadley, also a settler of Canisteo,) 
from the farm to the fort, and though almost an infant at the 
time retains distinctly the impression made by the night alarm, 
the terror, the flight and the confusion. The wife of Col. John 
Stephens, a late well-known citizen, was once captured by a 



39 

party of savages, and in the skirmish and rescue which ensued 
upon the pursuit of her captors by the border-men (one account 
says at the battle of the Hog-back) was wounded by a rifle ball 
fired by one of her friends. The Stephens' , after several removals 
from Wysox, Queen Esther's Flats, and other localities, were 
living, in the fourth or fifth year after the close of the Revolu- 
tionary War, at Newtown. 

Several families, relatives and acquaintance, were found willing 
to engage in the enterprise of further emigration. In 1788, Solo- 
mon Bennet, Capt. John Jameson, Uriah Stephens, and Richard 
Crosby, started upon an exploration. Passing up the Chemung 
to Painted Post, they found there a few cabins, a half dozen set- 
tlers, and Saxton and Porter, the surveyors of Phelps and Gorham. 
Penetrating further into the north by way of the Conhocton Val- 
ley, they found no lands which satisfied their expectations. On 
their return they struck across the hills from the upper waters of 
the Conhocton, and after toiling through the dense forests which 
crowded the shattered region to the westward of that river, they 
came suddenly upon the brink of a deep and fine valley through 
which the Canisteo rambled, in a crooked channel marked by the 
elms and willows which overhung it. The prospect was singu- 
larly beautiful. The huge barriers of the valley laden with that 
noble timber which raftsmen for half a century have been floating 
through the cataracts of the Susquehanna, ran in precipitous par- 
allels at a generous distance for several miles and then closing 
in, granted the river for its passage but a narrow gorge made 
dark by hemlocks. A heavy forest covered the floor of the val- 
ley. Groves of gigantic pine stood with their deep green tops in 
the midst of the maples, the elms, and the white sycamores. So 
even was the surface of the vale, so abrupt and darkly-shaded the 
ranges that enclosed it, that the explorers, looking down upon 
the tree tops that covered the ground from hill to hill, seemed to 
be standing above a lake of timber. At the lower part of the val- 
ley there was an open flat, of several hundred acres, overgrown 
with wild grass so high that a horse and rider could pass through 
the meadow almost unseen. It was like a little prairie, beautiful 
indeed, but strangely out of place in that rugged region, — as if 
some great Indian prophet had stolen a choice fragment from the 



4 o 

hunting grounds of the Missouri and hidden it in the midst of 
mountains bristling with gloomy hemlocks. 

The explorers decided to purchase the two townships on the 
river, which included tl*e open flats. Eight other men joined in 
the purchase : Col. Arthur Urwin, Joel Thomas, Uriah Stephens, 
(father of Uriah Stephens, Jr.,) John Stephens, his son, William 
Winecoop, James Hadley, Klisha Brown and Christian Kress. 

In the summer of 1789, a company of men were sent to the 
flats, who cut and stacked a sufficient quantity of wild grass to 
winter the cattle that were to be driven on. In the autumn of 
the same year, Uriah Stephens, the elder, and Richard Crosby, 
with portions of their families, started from Newtown to begin 
the proposed settlement. The provisions, baggage and families 
were carried up in seven-ton boats, while four sons of Mr. Steph- 
ens, Elias, Elijah, Benjamin and William, drove along the shore 
the cattle belonging to the two families in the boats, and to four 
other families which were to join them in the spring. From the 
mouth of the Canisteo to the upper flats, the movement was 
tedious and toilsome. Frequent rifts were to be ascended, and 
the channel was often to be cleared of obstructions, the trunks of 
trees and dams of drift-wood. On one day, they made but six 
miles. However, as the destinies, after forty centuries of hesita- 
tion, had decided that Upper Canisteo must be civilized, all ob- 
stacles were steadily surmounted. At the rifts, where the nose 
of the unwieldly boat, plowing under the water, at last wheeled 
about in spite of setting poles and swearing, and went down again 
to the foot of the rapids, every human thing that could pull, went 
on shore, took hold of a long rope, and hauled the barge up by 
main force. Thus for some three days the pioneers of Canisteo 
toiled up the hostile current, probably not without some little 
noise, as the shouting of boatmen , or the bawling of the youths 
on shore at the straggling cattle, which sometimes got entangled 
in the willow thickets by the little river, sometimes scrambled up 
the hill sides, sometimes stopped, shaking their horns in affright, 
when the wolf or fox bounded across the trail, or came racing 
back in paroxysms of terror, making the gorge to resound with 
strange bellowings, when they suddenly met the ugly and growl- 
ing bear, sitting like a foot-pad upon his haunches in the middle 



4i 

of the path, and so near to their unsuspecting nostrils, that he 
might cuff the face of the forward bullock with his paw, before 
the startled cattle became aware that they had ventured into the 
lurking-place of the shaggy brigand. 

At length the persevering voyagers landed on the upper flats. 
The astonished cattle found themselves almost smothered in the 
herbage of the meadows. The first thing to be devised was, of 
course, a habitation. The bark hut of the savage was the only 
structure which the wilderness had yet beheld, and was undoubt- 
edly a sufficient house for cannibals or philosophers ; but the 
pioneers, who were neither the former nor the latter, went straight- 
way into the woods, cut down certain trees, and built a luxurious 
castle of logs, 26 feet long by 24 wide. There was but one room 
below. Four fire-places were excavated in the four corners, and 
they who know what caverns fire-places were in old times, can 
imagine the brilliant appearance of this Canisteo Castle, at night, 
through the winter, when the blaze of burning logs in all the 
furnaces filled the cabin with light, and glimmering through the 
crevices, was seen by the Indian as he walked by on the crackling 
crust of the snow toward his lodge in the woods. In the follow- 
ing spring a family was encamped before each of the fire-places, 
and occupied each its own territory with as much good humour 
as if divided from the others by stone walls and gates of brass. 

The two families passed here the first winter very comfortably. 
In the spring of 1790 they were joined by Solomon Bennet, Uriah 
Stephens, Jr., and Colonel John Stephens his brother, with their 
families. As soon as the weather permitted, they set about pre- 
paring the ground for seed. Although the fiat was free from 
timber, this was no trifling task. The roots of the gigantic wild 
grass, braided and tangled together below the surface, protected 
the earth against the plow with a net so tight and stout, that or- 
dinary means of breaking the soil failed entirely. Four yoke of 
oxen forced the coulter through this well-woven netting, and the 
snapping and tearing of the roots as they gave way before the 
strength of eight healthy beeves was heard to a considerable dis- 
tance, like the ripping of a mat. The settlers never learned the 
origin of these meadows. " Captain John the Indian " said that 
he knew nothing of their origin ; they were cleared ' ' before the 



4 2 

time of his people." After the frosts, when the herbage had be- 
come dry and crisp, the grass was set on fire, and a very pretty 
miniature of a prairie-on-fire it made. The flames flashed over 
the flats almost as over a floor strewn with gunpowder. A swift 
horse could not keep before them. The wild grass, by successive 
mowings and burning, became less rank and more nutritious. 
In time it gradually changed to " tame grass," and at the present 
day there are meadows on the Canisteo which have never been 
broken by the plow. % 

After the sowing of Spring wheat and the planting of the corn, 
the settlers constructed a log fence on a scale as magnificent, 
considering their numbers, as that of the Chinese wall. This 
ponderous battlement enclosed nearly four hundred acres of land. 
The flats were divided among the proprietors. From the present 
site of Bennetsville down to the next township, a distance of 
about six miles, twelve lots were laid out from hill to hill across 
the valley, and assigned by lot to the several proprietors. The 
lot upon which the first house was built is known as the ' ' Ben- 
net " or " Pumpelly farm." That part of it upon which the 
house stood is upon the farm of Mr. Jacob Doty. In the course 
of the same spring (1790) Jedediah Stephens, John Redford, and 
Andrew Bennet, settled in the neighborhood. Jedediah Stephens, 
afterwards well known to the citizens of the county, was a faith- 
ful and respected preacher of the Baptist denomination. His 
house was for many years the resort of missionaries and religious 
travellers who passed through the valley, and indeed was said to 
be one of the few places where pilgrims of a serious disposition , 
and not inclined to join the boisterous company of the neighbor- 
hood, could find lodgings entirely to their satisfaction. 

The harvest abundantly attested the fertility of the valley. 
Seventy or seventy-five bushels of corn were yielded to the acre. 
Indeed, the timbered flats have been known to yield seventy-five 
bushels of corn, planted with the hoe after logging. They sent 
their grain in canoes to Shepherd's Mill, on the Susquehanna, a 
short distance above Tioga Point, and nearly one hundred miles 
distant from Canisteo. 

A few random notes of the settlement of this neighborhood 
may be added. Solomon Bennet was one of its leading spirits. 



43 

He was a hunter of renown, and bequeathed his skill and good 
fortune to his sons, who became well known citizens of the county, 
and were famous for readiness with the knife and rifle, and for 
"perhaps some shallow spirit of judgment " (or better) touching 
traps. Mr. Bennet built, in 1793, the first grist mill on the Can- 
isteo. It stood (and also a saw mill we are told) on Bennet' s 
creek, about half a mile from its mouth. It stood but a year or 
two when it was, unfortunately, burned to the ground. This mill 
was resorted to sometimes by the citizens of Bath. Early settlers 
remember how the pioneer boys came over the hills, through the 
unbroken woods, with their ox-drays, and retain vividly the image 
of a distinguished settler who came over from the Pine Plains 
with " his little brown mare and a sheepskin to ride upon " after 
a bag of corn-meal to keep off starvation. Flour was sometimes 
sent by canoes down the Canisteo and up the Conhocton. After 
the burning of the mill, the settlers were again compelled to send 
their grain in canoes to Shepherd's Mill. Mr. Benuet went to 
New York to purchase machinery for a new mill, but became en- 
gaged in other business, and failed to minister to the urgent ne- 
cessity of his neighbors. George Hornell (afterwards well known 
as Judge Hornell) settled in Canisteo in 1793- He was induced 
to build a mill on the site now occupied by the present Hornells- 
ville Mills. So impatient were the settlers for the erection of the 
building, that they turned out and prepared the timber for it 
voluntarily. 

The first goods were sold by Solomon Bennet. Judge Hornell 
and William Dunn visited the neighborhood at an early day for 
trade with the Indians. James Mc Burney, of Ireland, first came 
to Canisteo as a pedler. He bought Great L,ot, No. 12, in the 
lower township of Bennet, and other lands ; went to Ireland, and 
upon his return settled some of his countrymen on his lands. 

Christopher Hulburt and Nathaniel Cary settled in 1795 at 
Arkport. The former ran, in 1800 or about that time, the first 
ark laden with wheat that descended the Canisteo, and about the 
same time John Morrison ran the first raft. The honor of pilot- 
ing the first craft of the kind out of the Canisteo, however, is also 
claimed for Benjamin Patterson. 

Dr. Nathan Hallett, Jeremiah Baker, Daniel Purdy, Oliver 



44 

Harding, Thomas Butler, J. Russelman, the Upsons, the Stearns, 
and the Dykes also were among the earliest settlers on the upper 
Canisteo. 

The first taverns were kept in the year 1800, or about that 
time, by Judge Hornell, at his mills, and by Jedediah Stephens 
below Ben net's Creek. The first house in Hornellsville stood 
upon the site of Mr. Hugh Magee's Hotel. 

Under the old organization of the County of Ontario, the set- 
tlement of Canisteo was in the town of Williamson, which com- 
prised a large part of what is now Western Steuben County, Al- 
legany County, and how much more we know not. Jedediah 
Stephens was the first Supervisor of that town, and attended the 
meeting of the Board at Canandaigua. Town meeting was held 
at the house of Uriah Stephens, and seven votes were cast. 

Solomon Bennet is said by the settlers of Canisteo to have been 
the Captain. John Stephens, the lieutenant, and Richard Crosby 
the ensign of the first military company organized in Steuben 
County. 

A large proportion of the first settlers of Canisteo were from 
Pennsylvania, and had within them a goodly infusion of that 
boisterous spirit and love of rough play for which the free and 
manly sons of the backwoods are everywhere famous. On the 
Susquehanna frontier, before the Revolution, had arisen an ath- 
letic scuffling wrestling race, lovers of hard blows, sharp-shooters 
and runners, who delighted in nothing more than in those ancient 
sports by which the backs and limbs of all stout-hearted youth 
have been tested since the days of Hercules. The eating of bears, 
the drinking of grog, the devouring of hominy, venison, and all 
the invigorating diet of the frontiers ; the hewing down of forests, 
the paddling of canoes, the fighting of savages, all combined to 
form a generation of yeomen and foresters, daring, rude and free. 
Canisteo was a sprout from this stout stock, and on the generous 
river-flats flourished with amazing vigor. 

Life there was decidedly Olympic. The old Pythian games 
were revived with an energy that would have almost put a soul 
into the bones of Pindar ; and although many of the details of 
those classic festivals upon which the schoolmasters dwell with 
especial delight were wanting — the odes, the crowns of oak, the 



45 

music, and so on — nevertheless, one cannot help thinking that for 
the primitive boxers and sportsmen of the old school, men who 
wore lions' hides and carried clubs, the horse-play of Canisteo 
would have been quite as entertaining as the flutes and doggerel 
of Delphi. Every thing that could eat, drink and wrestle, was 
welcome ; Turk or Tuscarora, Anak, or Anthropophagus, Blue 
Beard or Blunderbore. A "back-hold " with a Ghoul would not 
have been declined, nor a drinking match with a Berserkir. Since 
the Centaurs never has there been better specimen of a " half- 
horse ' ' tribe. To many of the settlers in other parts of the county 
who emigrated from the decorous civilization of the east and 
south, these boisterous foresters were objects of astonishment. 
When " Canisteer " went abroad, the public soon found it out. 
On the Couhocton they were known to some as the Six-Nations, 
and to the amusement and wonder of young Europeans, would 
sometimes visit at Bath, being of a social disposition, and sit all 
day, ' ' singing, telling stories and drinking grog, and never get 
drunk nay ther." To the staid and devout they were Arabs, — 
cannibals. Intercourse between the scattered settlements of the 
county was of course limited mainly to visits of necessity ; but 
rumor took the fair fame of Canisteo in hand, and gave the set- 
tlement a notoriety through all the land, which few ' ' rising vil- 
lages " even of the present day enjoy. It was pretty well under- 
stood over all the country that beyond the mountains of Steuben, 
in the midst of the most rugged district of the wilderness, lay a 
corn-growing valley which had been taken possession of by some 
vociferous tribe, whether of Mamelukes or Tartars no one could 
precisely say ; whose whooping and obstreperous laughter was 
heard far and wide, surprising the solitudes. 

The ' ' Romans of the West ' ' were not long in finding out 
these cousins, and many a rare riot they had with them. The 
uproars of these festivals beggar description. The valley seemed 
a den of maniacs. The savages came down four or five times in 
each year from Squakie Hill for horse and foot-racing, and to 
play all manner of rude sports. In wrestling, or in "rough-and- 
tumble" they were not matches for the settlers, many of whom 
were proficients in the Susquehanna sciences, and had been regu- 
larly trained in all the wisdom of the ancients. The Indians 



4 6 

were powerful of frame and of good stature. The settlers agree 
that ' ' they were quick as cats, but the poor critters had no sys- 
tem." When fairly grappled, the Indians generally came off 
second best. They were slippery and "limber like snakes," oil- 
ing themselves freely, and were so adroit in squirming out of the 
clinch of the farmers, that it was by no means the most trifling 
part of the contest to keep the red antagonist in the hug. 

In these wrestling matches, Elias Stephens was the champion. 
He was called the "smartest Stephens on the river," and was 
in addition claimed by his friends as the ' ' smartest ' ' man in the 
country at large. No Indian in the Six Nations could lay him 
on his back. A powerful young chief was once brought by his 
tribe from Tonewanta to test the strength of the Canisteo Cham- 
pion. He had been carefully trained and exercised, and after 
' ' sleeping in oiled blankets ' ' for several nights, was brought into 
the ring. Stephens grappled with him. At the first round the 
chief was hurled to the ground with a thigh-bone broken. His 
backers were very angry, and, drawing their knives, threatened 
to kill the victor. He and his friend Daniel Upson, took each a 
sled-stake and standing back to back defied them. The matter was 
finally made up, and the unlucky chief was borne away on a 
deer-skin, stretched between two poles.* In addition to this, 
Stephens once maintained the credit of the Canisteo by signally 
discomfiting a famous wrestler from the Hog-back. 

Foot races, long and short, for rods or miles, were favorite di- 
versions. In these the Indians met with better success than in 

^Stephens was trained by a wrestler of some note living on the Chemung 
named McCormick, who afterward was for many years a citizen of this 
county. McCormick was a British soldier, and reputed to be the most 
powerful and expert pugilist in the army. He deserted during the Revolu- 
tionary war and went with Arnold to Quebec. After the failure of the des- 
perate assault on that town, McCormick, with a party of American soldiers, 
were standing on the ice of the St. Lawrence when the British approached 
to make them prisoners. Knowing that the deserter would be hanged, if 
taken, his comrades gathered around him in a huddle, pretending to prepare 
resistance. The British parlied. In the mean time McCormick pulled off 
his shoes, for "the ice was as smooth as a bottle," and ran. A shower of 
bullets rattled around him, but he was so fortunate as to escape unhurt. 
Captain Silas Wheeler, late of the town of Wheeler, was in that crowd, and 
gives McCormick the credit of extraordinary briskness. 



47 

wrestling ; but even in racing they did not maintain the credit of 
their nation to their entire satisfaction, for there was now and 
then a long-winded youth among the settlers who beat the bar- 
barians at their own game. So for horse-racing, this ancient and 
herioc pastime was carried on with a zeal that would shame New- 
market. The Indians came down on these occasions with all 
their households, women, children, dogs and horses. The set- 
tlers found no occasion to complain of their savage guests. They 
conducted themselves with civility, generally, and even formed 
in some instances, warm friendships with their hosts. 

Infant Canisteo of course followed in the footsteps of senior 
Canisteo. When fathers and big brothers found delight in scuff- 
ling with barbarians, and in racing with Indian ponies, it would 
have been strange if infant Canisteo had taken of its own accord 
to Belles Lettres and Arithmetic. The strange boy found him- 
self in a den of young bears. He was promptly required to fight, 
and after such an introduction to the delights of the valley, was 
admitted to freedom of trap and fishery in all the streams and 
forests of the commonwealth. And for infant Canisteo, consider- 
ing that passion for wild life which plays the mischief with boys 
everywhere, even in the very ovens of refinement, a more con- 
genial region could not have been found. The rivers and brooks 
alive with fish, the hills stocked with deer, the groves populous 
with squirrels, the partridges drumming in the bushes, the rac- 
coons scrambling in the tree-tops, removed every temptation to 
rnn away in search of a solitary island and a man Friday ; while 
their little ill-tempered Iroquois play-fellows, with their arrow- 
practice, their occasional skirmishes, and their mimic war-paths 
satisfied those desires to escape from school to the Rocky Moun- 
tains and the society of grizzly bears and Camanches, which so 
often turn the heads of youngsters nurtured in the politest of 
academies. 

This backwoods mode of education, though by no means so 
exquisite as our modern systems, has proved nevertheless quite 
efficient for practical purposes. The boys who in early times 
played with the heathen and persecuted raccoons, instead of learn- 
ing their grammars have, astonishing to see, become neither 
pagans nor idiots. Some have become farmers, some lumber- 



4 8 

men, some supervisors, and some justices of the peace ; and 
whether in the field or in the saw-mill, whether in the county's 
august parliament, or in the chair of the magistrate, the duties of 
all those stations seem to have been performed substantially as 
well as needs be. For the Robin Hoods of Cauisteo could plow, 
mow, and fell trees, if need be, as well as the best, and did not 
hold laziness in higher respect than did the other pioneers of the 
county. 

The Indians made their appearance shortly after the landing of 
the settlers — the Canisteo Valley having long been a favorite 
hunting field. The men of Wyoming found among them many 
of their old antagonists. Tories never were forgiven, but the 
proffered friendship of the Indians was accepted : old enmities 
were forgotten, and the settlers and savages lived together on the 
most amicable terms. Shortly after their arrival an old Indian, 
afterwards well known as "Captain John," made his appearance, 
and on seeing the elder Stephens, went into a violent fit of merri- 
ment. Language failed to express the cause of his atnusement, 
which seemed to be some absurd reminiscence suddenly suggested 
by the sight of the settler, and the old ' ' Roman ' ' resorted to 
pantomime. He imitated the gestures of a man smoking — put- 
ting his hand to his mouth to withdraw an imaginary pipe, then 
turning up his mouth and blowing an imaginary cloud of smoke, 
then stooping to tie an imaginary shoe, then taking an imaginary 
boy in his arms and running away, and returning with violent 
peals of laughter. One of the sons of Mr. Stephens, a hot and 
athletic youth, supposing that the Indian was " making fun " of 
his father, snatched up a pounder to knock him on the head. 
Captain John was driven from the ideal to the real, and made 
good his retreat. He afterwards became a fast friend of the set- 
tlers, and explained the cause of his merriment. 

When Mr. Stephens lived near Wyoming, he was one day going 
from his farm to the fort, with two oxen and a horse, which were 
attached to some kind of vehicle. His boy, Phineas, was riding 
on the horse. Mr. Stephens was an inveterate smoker, and 
walked by the side of the oxen, puffing after the manner imitated 
by Captain John. While passing through the woods near a fork 
of the roads, his shoe stuck in the mud, and was drawn off his 



4§ 

foot. Just as he stooped to recover it, a rifle was fired from the 
bushes, which killed the nigh ox, by the side of which he had 
been walking. The alarm of " Indians /" was sounded from the 
other branch of the road, where some of his neighbors were killed. 
Mr. Stephens started and ran, but his boy crying out, "Don't 
leave me, father ! " he returned and took him in his arms, and 
fled to the fort. The ambushed rifleman was none other than 
Captain John, and he, recognizing the smoker fifteen years after 
the adventure, was quite overpowered at the recollection of the 
joke. 

Another meeting of two old enemies took place on the banks of 
the Canisteo not long afterwards. Major Moses Van Campen, 
(late of Dansville, Livingston County,) well known to the Six 
Nations as a powerful, daring and sagacious ranger in the border 
wars of Pennsylvania, moved up the river with a colony destined 
for Allegany County, and offered to land at the settlement on 
Canisteo Flats. Van Campen was especially obnoxious to the 
Indians for the part he had taken as a leader of a bold and destruc- 
tive attack, made in the night, by himself and two others, prison- 
ers, (Pence and Pike by name,) upon the party by which they 
had been captured in an incursion against the settlements, in 
which Van Campen' s father and young brother had been killed 
before his own eyes. There were ten Indians in the party. One 
evening, while encamped at Wyalusing Flats, on their way to 
Niagara, Van Campen resolved to put in execution a long medi- 
tated plan of escape. He managed to conceal under his foot a 
knife which had been dropped by an Indian, and with this, at 
midnight, the prisoners cut themselves loose. They stole the 
guns from their sleeping enemies, and placed them against a tree. 
Pike's heart failed him, and he laid down just as the two allotted 
to him for execution awoke and were arising. Van Campen, 
seeing that ' ' their heads were turned up fair, ' ' killed them with 
a tomahawk, and three besides. Pence killed four with the guns. 
Van Campen struck his hatchet into the neck of the only remain- 
ing Indian, a chief named Mohawk, who turned and grappled 
with him. A desperate and doubtful struggle followed, one being 
sometimes uppermost and sometimes the other. Van Campen 
was half blinded by the blood of his wounded antagonist, who felt, 



5<3 

as often as he got opportunity, for the knife in his belt. This 
would have soon settled the contest, and Van Campen finally 
stuck his toes into the Indian's belt and hoisted him off. The 
latter bounded into the woods and escaped. 

The savages recognized Van Campen on his arrival at Canisteo 
as "the man that lent John Mohawk the hatchet." Captain 
Mohawk himself was there, and had a special cause of grievance 
to exhibit in a neck set slightly awry from the blow of the toma- 
hawk. The settlers rallied for the defence of Van Campen. 
There was every prospect of a bloody fight ; but after much 
wrangling it was agreed that the two parties should divide while 
Van Campen and Mohawk advanced between them to hold a 
"talk." This was done, and in a conference of considerable 
length between the two old antagonists, the causes of difficulty 
were discussed, and it was finally decided that each was doing his 
duty then, but that now war being ended, they ought to forget 
past injuries. Mohawk offered his hand. The threatened fight 
became a feast. A keg of spirits was broken and the hills rang 
with riot.* 

The Indians sometimes entertained the men of Canisteo with a 
display of their military circtimstance, and marched forth on the 
flats, to the number of three hundred warriors, in full costume, to 
dance the grand war-dance. They made a fire about eight rods 
long and paraded around it with hideous chants and a great clat- 
tering of little deer-skin drums. On one of these grand field-days, 
the whole tribe, arrayed most fantastical^ , was marching around 
the fire, and with the flourishing of knives, the battering of drums, 
and the howling of war songs, had worked themselves up into a 
brilliant state of excitement. The settlers, boys and men, were 
standing near watching the performance, when a high -heeled 
young savage stepped out of the line and inquired of one of the 
bystanders — 

* Mohawk was a noble warrior, — a Roman indeed. See Stone's Life of 
Brant (somewhere in the second volume) for an incident which occurred in 
the captivity of the gallant Capt. Alexander Harper. The "single voice" 
which responded with "the death yell" was Mohawk's without doubt. 
"The name of this high-souled warrior" is not lost, as Col. Stone feared. 
The biographer of Van Campen makes out a satisfactory case for Captain 
Mohawk. 



5' 

'' What's your name ?" 

The settler informed him. 

' ' D d liar ! d d hog ! ' ' said the Indian. 

Elias Stephens, who was a prompt and high tempered youth, 
said, " Daniel, I wish he would just ask me that question." 

The Indian instantly turned and said, 

" What's your name ?" 

" Elias Stephens." 

" D d liar ! d d " 

The sentence remains unfinished up to the present date. A 
well-planted blow of the fist knocked the barbarian headlong over 
the fire, senseless. The sensation for a moment was great. The 
dance was stopped, the drums became dumb ; tomahawks and 
knives were brandished no longer, and the savages stood aloof in 
such angry astonishment, that the bystanders trembled for their 
skulls. The Chief however came forward, and striking Stephens 
approvingly on the shoulders, said, " Good enough for Indian." 
He expected his warriors to behave themselves like gentlemen, 
and when copper-colored gentlemen so far forgot themselves as to 
use indelicate or personal language, he would thank pale-faced 
gentlemen to knock them over the fire, or through the fire, or into 
the fire, as it might be most convenient. The dance went on with 
renewed vigor, but the punished pagan descended from his high 
horse and sat aside in silence, volunteering during the rest of the 
entertainment no more flourishes not promised " on the bills." 

Sometimes the Indians treated the settlers to a display of their 
tactics. Hiding behind a rampart of roots or lying in ambush 
among the bushes, at a signal given the whole party fired their 
rifles at certain imaginary foes. The chief sprang up and raised 
the war-whoop, and then the three hundred joined in that fright- 
ful cry of the Six Nations, which, to use the favorite phrase of 
the pioneers, "was enough to take the hair off a man's head." 
Then, rushing out, they tomahawked the pumpkins and scalped 
the turnips, then dodged back to their covert and lay still as 
snakes. 

Elias Stephens, for his prowess and resolution, became an ob- 
ject of respect to the red gentry. Fourteen men were working in 
Bennett's millyard when sixteen " Romans" came down whoop- 



52 

ing furiously, and drove the lumbermen from their work, took 
possession of the mill, and converted it into a dancing saloon. It 
was told to Stephens. " What !" said he, "you fourteen let six- 
teen of those critters drive you out of the yard ! Lord ! I can 
whip a hundred Indians." And taking the swingle of a flail ran 
to the mill. The Indians were capering about in high glee, 
brandishing their knives and shrieking very like Mark Antony 
and fifteen other Romans, and indulging in all those antics with 
which the barbarians of the Log- House were wont to divert them- 
selves. 

" Put up those knives, damn you, and march," said Stephens. 
The diversions came to a sudden pause. " Put up those knives, 
damn you, and be off, or I'll beat all your brains out!" The 
Romans said never a word, but stuck their knives into their belts 
and departed. 

SETTLEMENT OF THE LOWER CANISTEO VALLEY. 

Our notes of the settlement of the lower valley of the Canisteo 
are very brief. None of the original settlers of Addison are now 
living in the county. We can present nothing more than the 
names of these pioneers. The settlement of Addison was com- 
menced probably in 1790, or shortly after. The first settlers were 
Reuben and Lemuel Searles ; John, Isaac, and James Martin ; 
Jonathan Tracy ; William Benham ; Martin Young, and Isaac 
Morey. 

The first name of the settlement was Tuscarora. This was 
afterwards changed to Middletown, and again to Addison. 

The first tavern was kept by Reuben Searles, on Lockerby's 
stand. 

George Goodhue built a saw-mill there as early as 1793. 

The first generation of settlers, as we are informed, has become 
extinct. Messrs. William Wombaugh, William B. Jones, John 
and Stephen Towsley, and Rev.^Tarathmel Powers, though early 
settlers, came in a few years after the first settlement. 

The pioneers of the town of Cameron were Joseph Warren, 
John Helmer, Samuel Baker, and Andrew Helmer. 

This meagre notice of the settlement of the valley below the 



S3 

present town of Canisteo is the most complete that could be ob- 
tained from the best authorities to whom the writer was referred. 

THE SETTLEMENT OF THE TIOGA VALLEY. 

The first settlements in the Tioga Valley were made just over 
the Pennsylvania line, in the neighborhood of L,awrenceville. 
Samuel Baker, afterwards of Pleasant Valley, in this county, 
settled upon the open flat, at the mouth of the Cowenisque Creek, 
in 1787, and not long afterwards a few other settlers, the Stones, 
the Barneys and the Daniels, who also afterwards removed to 
Pleasant Valley, erected cabins in the wild grass and hazel bushes 
of the vicinity. 

Col- Eleazer Ljndley, a native of New Jersey, and an active 
officer of the "Jersey Blues" during the Revolutionary War, rode 
through the Genesee country previous to the year 1790, to find a 
tract of land where he might establish himself, and gather his 
children around him. The sickliness of the regions around Sen- 
eca and Canandaigua L,akes deterred him from locating his town- 
ship in the rich northern plains, and he purchased township 
number one of the second range, a rugged and most unpromising 
tract for agricultural purposes, but intersected by the fine valley 
of the Tioga. The healthy hills, the pure springs, and the clear 
beautiful river, descending from the ravines of the Alleganies, 
promised, if not wealth, at least freedom from those fevers, agues, 
cramps and distempers, which prostrated the frames and wrenched 
the joints of the unfortunate settlers in the northern marches. 

In the spring of 1790, Col. Lindley started from New Jersey 
with a colony of about forty persons, who, with their goods, were 
transported in wagons to the Susquehanna. At Wilkesbarre the 
families and baggage were transferred to seven-ton boats and poled 
up the river, according to the practice of emigrants penetrating 
Ontario county by that valley ; while the horses and cattle, of 
which there were thirty or forty, were driven along the trails, or 
rude roads, on the bank. On the 7th day of June, 1790, the 
colony reached the place of destination. 

Two sons of Col. Lindley, Samuel and Eleazer, and five sons- 
in-law, Dr. Mulford, Ebenezer Backus, Capt. John Seely, Dr. 



54 

Hopkins and David Payne, started with the colony from New 
Jersey. Dr. Hopkins remained at Tioga Point to practice his 
profession. The others settled near Col. Ljndley. 

The river-flats were " open," and overgrown with strong wild 
grass and bushes. Ploughs were made by the settlers after their 
arrival, and as soon as these were finished, the flats were imme- 
diately broken, as on the Canisteo, with four oxen to each plough. 
The season was so far advanced, that the crop of corn was de- 
stroyed by frost, but a great harvest of buckwheat was secured. 
With buckwheat, milk and game, life was stayed during the first 
winter. History, looking sharply into the dim vale of ancient 
Tioga, smiles to see the image of "Old Pomp," a negro pound- 
ing buckwheat in a samp-mortar, from the first ice in November 
till the breaking up of the rivers in March, when canoes can find 
a passage to Shepard's Mill, on the Susquehanna. History also, 
in this connection, will embrace the opportunity to rescue Old 
Pomp from oblivion for the notable exploit of killing four bucks 
at a shot, and has the pleasure, therefore, of handing the said 
Pompey down to future generations as a fit subject for as much 
admiration as an intelligent and progressive race may think due 
to the man who laid low, with a musket at one shot, four fine 
bucks, as they were standing in the water. 

Colonel and Mrs. L,indley were members of the Presbyterian 
Church, at Morristown, in New Jersey. In his settlement the 
Sabbath was strictly observed. Travelling missionaries were 
always welcomed, and when none such were present, the settlers 
were collected to hear a sermon read by Col. Liudley himself. In 
1793, Col. Dindley was elected a member of the Legislature, and 
while attending the session of that body died in New York. 
Numerous descendants of Col. D- live in the neighborhood settled 
by him. His son, Hon. Kleazer Dindley, was, for several years, 
a Judge of the County Court. He died in 1825. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE GREAT AIR CASTLE — THE CITY BUILDERS — CAPTAIN WIL- 
LIAMSON — NORTHUMBERLAND THE GERMAN COLONY — THE 
PASSAGE OF THE GERMANS THROUGH THE WILDERNESS- 

While our foremost pioneers were reaping their first harvests 
in the valleys of the Canisteo and Chemung, great schemes were 
on foot in the Capital of the British Empire for the Invasion of 
the Genesee wilderness. An officer of the royal army had con- 
ceived a splendid project for the foundation of a city in the midst 
of the forest, and, sustained by men of wealth in London, was 
about to penetrate its inmost thickets to raise up a Babylon 
amongst the habitations of the owl and the dragon. 

The first purchasers of the Indian territory between the Genesee 
River and Seneca Lake had sold an immense estate to Robert 
Morris, the merchant. Morris had offered his lands for sale in 
the principal cities of Europe. The representations of his agents 
gained much attention from men of capital, and three gentlemen 
of London, Sir William Pulteney, John Hornby and Patrick Col- 
quhoun, purchased that noble estate which has since borne the 
name of the English Baronet. Their agent, Captain Charles 
Williamson, visited America, and excited by the reports trans- 
mitted by him, the associates indulged in brilliant dreams of the 
destiny of the wilderness which had fallen into their hands. 

It was plain to see that the noblest forest of the Six Nations 
was soon to pass from the hands of those unfortunate tribes. 
This magnificent woodland, enclosed on three sides by Lakes 
Erie and Ontario, and that chain of rivers and slender lakes which 
divides our State into Central and Western New York, was 
already invaded by the forerunners of civilization. Traders had 
established themselves on the great trails. Explorers had marked 
cascades for the mill-wheel, and council groves for the axe. Tribe 
after tribe had first wavered and then fallen before the seductions 
of the merchant and the commissioner, and it was easy to see, 



56 

that against the temptations of rifles and red rags and silver dol- 
lars, the expostulations of the native orators, who besought the 
elans to hold forever their ancient inheritance, would be power- 
less. Uneasy emigration was already pressing the borders of the 
whole western country, and, like water about to flood the land, 
was leaking through the barriers of the wilderness at every crevice. 
Wyoming rifles were already cracking among the hills of Canisteo. 
New England axes were already ringing in the woods, of Onon- 
daga and Genesee, and most fatal of all signs, a land-ogre from 
Massachusetts sat in his den at Canadarque, carving the princely 
domain of the Senecas into gores and townships, while the wild 
men could but stand aside, some in simple wonder, others with 
Roman indignation, to see the partition of their inheritance. 

It is not difficult to see what will be the end of this, thought 
the British castle builders. In half a century the wild huntsmen 
will be driven to the solitudes of the Ohio. This wonderful forest 
will have fallen, and men of Celtic blood and Saxon sinews will 
have possessed themselves of a land of surpassing richness. A 
city of mills will stand by the cataracts of Genesee. A city of 
warehouses at the foot of L,ake Erie will receive at her docks the 
barges of traders from the illimitable western wilderness. Fields 
of fabulous fertility will bask in the sunlight where now the 
whooping pagan charges the bear in his thicket. Numberless 
villages by the rivers and secluded lakes will raise their steeples 
above the tree tops, while immeasurable farms will stretch from 
the shore of Ontario to the abutment of the Alleganies, and even 
thrust their meadows far within the southern ravines and hemlock 
gorges like tongues of the sea thrust far inland. It will be a re- 
gion of exceeding beauty and of unbounded wealth. 

They further considered the avenues by which this western 
Canaan might communicate with the world without, and through 
which her products might pass to the sea-board. The maps re- 
vealed four natural avenues for commerce. One, in the north, 
led to Newfoundland fogs and the icebergs of Labrador. The 
second, opening in the hills of Cattaraugus, conducted to Mis- 
sissippi marshes and the Gulf of Mexico. The third offered itself 
in the north-east, where by tedious beating and portages, one 
might get into the Mohawk and float slowly down to New York 



57 

Bay. But in the south-west, the Susquehanna thrust a branch 
almost to the centre of the Genesee country — a small but nav- 
igable river, the beginning of swift waters which might bear pon- 
derous cargoes in five days to the head of Chesapeake Bay. Men 
of judgment and experience, the statesmen and commercial 
prophets of the time, pointed to this river as the destined high- 
way of the west. According to the best of human calculation, 
the products of the Genesee, instead of being entrusted to the St. 
Lawrence, the Mississippi, or the perplexing channels of the 
Oswego and Mohawk, would inevitably seek this convenient val- 
ley, to be stowed in the rough river-craft, which, gliding down the 
swift waters of the Conhocton and Chemung, might enter on the 
second day the Susquehanna, and riding safely over the foaming 
rapids, plow in a week, the tide water of the ocean. Further- 
more, if in the course of centuries, civilized men penetrate those 
vast and wonderful wilds beyond the lakes, by what other road 
than this, is the surplus of Michigan and the north-west to reach 
the Atlantic ? The belief was not without foundation. Looking 
at the maps, even at this day, and observing how the north- 
western branch of the Susquehanna penetrates western New York, 
it would seem that but for the disastrous interference of the Erie 
canal and the unfortunate invention of railroads, the Conhocton 
valley might have been the highway of an immense commerce, 
and the roads leading to the port at the head of her navigable 
waters might have been trampled by tremendous caravans. 

The imagination of the castle-builders was fired at this prospect. 
Such a flood, they argued, like the Abyssinian waters that swell 
the Nile, must enrich the valley through which it flows. In the 
midst of this valley must be a city — Alcairo of the West. Thither 
will all people flow. Caravans such as the deserts have never 
seen, will meet in its suburbs. Its market places will present all 
that picturesque variety of garb and manner which interest the 
traveler in an oriental sea-port. There will be seen the Canadian 
and his pony from the beaver dams of the upper province, the 
Esquimaux with his pack of furs from Labrador, the buffalo- 
hunter from the illimitable plains of Illinois, the warrior from 
Maumee, and the trapper from the Grand Sault, while merchants 
from the old Atlantic cities will throng the buzzing bazaars, and 



58 

the European traveler will look with amazement on the great 
north-western caravan as it rolls like an annual inundation 
through the city gates. The river, now narrow, crooked and 
choked with flood-wood, will become, by an artful distribution of 
the mountain waters, a deep and safe current, and will bear to the 
Susquehanna arks and rafts in number like the galleys of Tyre of 
old. Warehouses and mills will stand in interminable files upon 
its banks. Steeples, monuments, pyramids, and man knows not 
what beside, will rise in its noble squares. 

This was the vision that greeted the eye's of the British adven- 
turers ; and to found the promised metropolis their agent, a 
Scottish officer, crossed the Atlantic and went up into the wilder- 
ness clothed with plenary powers, and with unlimited authority 
over the Baronet's banker. Castles of ivory and towers of glass 
glimmered in his eyes far away among the pines. A more bril- 
liant bubble never floated in the sunshine. A more stupendous 
air castle never shone before human eyes. Would the glorious 
bubble submit to be anchored to hills, or would it rise like a bal- 
loon and float away through the air ? Could the grand wavering 
air castle be made stone, and was it possible to change the vapors, 
the fogs, the moonshine, the red clouds and rainbows, out of 
which such atmospherical structures are made into brick and 
marble? If any man was fit to attempt such a chemical exploit, 
it was the one entrusted by the associates with its execution. 

Charles Williamson, the first agent of the Pulteney Estate, was 
a native of Scotland. He entered the British army in youth, and 
during the Revolutionary war held the commission of Captain in 
the twenty -fifth regiment of foot. His regiment was ordered to 
America, but on the passage Captain Williamson was captured by 
a French privateer. He remained a prisoner at Boston till the 
close of the war. On his return to Europe, he made the acquaint- 
ance of the most distinguished public men of England, and was 
often consulted concerning American affairs. On the organiza- 
tion of the association of Sir William Pulteney and the others, he 
was appointed its agent, and entered zealously into the schemes 
for colonizing the Genesee Forest. Captain Williamson was a 
man of talent, hope, energy and versatility, generous and brave of 
spirit, swift and impetuous in action, of questionable discretion in 



59 

business, a lover of sport and excitement, and well calculated by 
his temperament and genius to lead the proposed enterprise. His 
spirit was so tempered with imagination, that he went up to the 
wilderness, not with the dry and dogged resolution of one expect- 
ing a labor of a lifetime in subduing the savage soil, but in a kind 
of chivalrous dashing style, to head an onslaught amongst the 
pines, and to live a Earon of the Backwoods in his Couhocton 
Castle, ruling over forests and rivers, after the manner of the old 
Norman nobles in England. 

Having landed in Baltimore in 1791, and taken the steps re- 
quired by our naturalization laws, he received in his own name, 
from Robert Morris, a conveyance of the Pulteney estate, and 
begun immediately his preparations for the colonization of the 
estate. Of these preliminary movements, there is but little to be 
said. It appears that he corresponded extensively with men 
whom he sought to engage in his enterprise, that he opened com- 
munication with many planters of Virginia and Maryland, pro- 
posing a transfer of themselves and their households from the 
worn-out plantations of the South, to the fresh woods of the Gen- 
esee ; that he travelled much through the country and made 
active exertions by personal application and by advertisement to 
induce farmers and emigrants of the better sort from Great Brit- 
ain to settle upon his Northern lands. 

He established his centre of organization and correspondence at 
the village of Northumberland, situated on the Susquehanna, at 
the mouth of the West Branch of that river, then a place of much 
consequence, and one which at this day, though somewhat de- 
cayed, retains an ancient and old fashioned respectability of ap- 
pearance not to be seen in the dashing young town of New York, 
west of the Mohawk. To this old town we owe at least civility. 
For a time, during the infancy of our county, it was one great 
reliance against starvation and nakedness. It supplied us with 
flour when we had no grain, with pork when we had no meat, 
with clothes when we were unclad, with shoes when we were 
unshod. It sent us our mails, it fitted out caravans of emigrants, 
it received with hearty cheer our gentlemen when weary of riding 
over the desolate Lycoming road. Many impudent villages of 
the north, which now like high-headed youngsters keep their fast 



6o 

telegraphs, smoke anthracite coal, and drive their two-minute 
locomotives, as if they inherited estates from their ancestors, were, 
if the truth must be told, once shabby and famished settlements, 
and when faint and perishing were saved from actual starvation 
by this portly old Susquehanna farmer, who sent out his hired 
men with baskets of corn, and huge shoulders of pork, with orders 
to see to it that not a squatter went hungry. By extraordinary 
good luck these lean squatters became suddenly rich, and now 
arrayed in very flashy style, with Gothic steeples and Moorish 
pavilions, and all such trumpery, driving their fine chariots, and 
smoking their sheet-iron funnels, they laugh most impertinently, 
and we may say ungratefully at the old Quaker who had compas- 
sion on them, when they lay starving in the underbrush. These 
things, let the lumberman remember, when from his raft he sees 
the white steeple of Northumberland relieved against the dark 
precipice beyond ; the w r est branch meanwhile pouring its flood 
into the lordly Susquehanna, and renowned Shemokinn Dam, the 
Charybdis of pilots, roaring below. 

In the winter after his arrival in America, Captain Williamson 
made a visit to the Genesee by way of Albany and the Mohawk. 
In the upper valley of the Mohawk he^ passed the last of the old 
settlements. From these old German farms the road was but a 
lane opened in the woods, passable only on horseback, or in a 
sledge. A few cabins, surrounded by scanty clearings, were the 
only indications of civilization which met his, eye, till he stood 
amongst a group of cabins at the foot of Seneca Fake. The famed 
Genesee estate was before him. Surely few city builders of ancient 
or modern times have gazed upon districts which offered less en- 
couragement to them than did the wild Iroquois forest to the 
hopeful Scot. A little settlement had been commenced at Canan- 
daigua. The Wadsworths were at Big Tree. The disciples of 
Jemima Wilkinson, the prophetess, had established their new 
Jerusalem on the outlet of Crooked Lake, and scattered through 
the vast woods, a few hundred pioneers were driving their axes to 
the hearts of the tall trees, and waging war with the wolves and 
panthers. Beyond the meadows of the Genesee Flats was a forest 
as yet unknown to the axe, which harbored tribes of savages waver- 
ing betwixt war and peace. British garrisons, surly from discom- 



6i 

fiture, occupied the forts at Oswego and Niagara ; colonies of 
Tories, including in their numbers of infamous renown, dwelt on 
the frontiers of Canada, on lands allotted to them by the crown, 
and there were not wanting those amongst the military and polit- 
ical agents of the provincial government who incited the jealous 
barbarians to the general slaughter of the backwoodsmen. 

Wilderness upon wilderness was before him. Wilderness sur-, 
rounded the white ice-bound lakes above Erie, and spread over 
plains and mountains to the fabulous prairies of which the Indians 
told tales too wonderful for belief. The British troops and a few 
French settlers near Detroit, with a few traders and agents 
amongst the Ohio tribes, were the only civilized occupants of the 
far west. In the southern districts of the estate there were small 
settlements on the Chemung and the Canisteo, accessible only 
from below by the rivers. There were settlements on the upper 
Susquehanna and at Tioga Point. 

In the following summer Captain Williamson determined to 
open a high road from Northumberland to the Genesee. The 
only road leading to the north from the mouth of the West 
Branch followed the valley of the Susquehanna, which at this 
point, to one going above, begins a long and unnecessary ramble 
to the east. A direct road to the Genesee would cross a ridge of 
the Alleganies. An Indian trail, often trod during the Revolu- 
tion by parties from the fastnesses of the Six Nations, ran over 
the mountains ; but to open a road through the shattered wilder- 
ness, which would be passable for wagons, was deemed impos- 
sible. After a laborious exploration, however, by the agent and 
a party of Pennsylvanian Hunters, a road was located from 
' ' Ross Farm ' ' (now Williamsport) to the mouth of Canascraga 
Creek, on the Genesee, a distance of one hundred and fifty miles. 
This road was opened in the ensuing autumn by a party of Ger- 
man emigrants. 

The fortunes of this German colony formed quite a perplexing- 
episode in Captain Williamson's history. " The time when Ben 
Patterson brought the Germans through ' ' is yet remembered by 
a few of our aged citizens. The simplicity, the sufferings and the 
terrors of these Teutonic pioneers were sources of much amuse- 
ment to the rough backwoodsmen, and their passage through the 



62 

wilderness and over the wild L,aurel Mountains, was in early times 
an event so momentous, that although the matter has strictly but 
little reference to the history of this county, it may nevertheless 
be permitted to recount their frights and tribulations. 

It seems that Mr. Colquhoun, who conducted the business affairs 
of the Association, became acquainted in London with a certain Dr. 
Berezy, a German of education and address, who engaged to col- 
lect a colony of his countrymen, and conduct them to the Genesee 
lands under the auspices of the associates. Captain Williamson 
seems not to have favored the scheme, but while living at North- 
umberland in 1792, the colony arrived, and it fell upon him to 
devise some plan of disposing of this very raw material to the best 
advantage. There were about two hundred of them, men, women 
and children . Though stout and healthy enough , they were an igno- 
ant and inexperienced people, accustomed to dig with the spade in 
the little gardens of the Fatherland, and as unfit for forest work and 
the rough life of the frontiers as babes. Captain Williamson, 
with his high and hopeful spirits, did not lay the matter deeply 
at heart, but encouraged the honest folk, and filled their heads 
with fine tales, till they saw almost as many balloons hanging 
afar off over the wilderness as the enthusiastic Briton himself 
beheld. 

It was determined to send them over the mountains to the 
Tioga, thence by the valleys of that river and of the Conhocton, 
to Williamsburgh, on the Genesee. It was necessary to give the 
emigrants in charge to some reliable and energetic guide, who 
would see to it that they did not fall into the rivers, or break 
their necks over the rocks, or be crushed by falling trees, or be 
devoured of bears, or frightened out of their wits by owls and 
buzzards. Benjamin Patterson, the hunter, who was well 
acquainted with the German language, and in whose judgment 
and resolution Captain Williamson had entire confidence, was 
employed in this capacity. He was abundantly provided with 
money and means. Seven stout young Pennsylvanians, well 
skilled in the use of the axe and the rifle, were chosen by him as 
assistant woodsmen, and these and the Germans were to open the 
road, while the guide, in addition to his duties as commander of 
the column, undertook to supply the camp with game. 



63 

It was in the month of September when the emigrants appeared 
at the mouth of Lycoming Creek, ready for the march to the 
Northern Paradise. The figure of the Guide, girt for the wilder- 
ness, with his hunting shirt, belt, knife and tomahawk, appeared 
to the simple Germans rather an odd one for a shepherd who was 
to lead them over Delectable Mountains to meadows and pleasant 
brooks. It seemed rather like the figure of some hard-headed 
Mr. Great-Heart, arrayed with a view to such bruises as one 
must expect in a jaunt through the land of Giant Grim and other 
unamiable aborigines ; and when the seven stalwart young front- 
iersmen stood forth, girt in like manner, for warfare or the wilder- 
ness, visions of cannibals and cougars, of bears and alligators, of 
the bellowing unicorn and the snorting hippopotamus, were 
vividly pataded before the eyes of the startled pilgrims. 

A little way up the creek they commenced hewing the road. 
Here the Germans took their first lessons in wood-craft. They 
were not ready apprentices, and never carried the art to great 
perfection. We hear of them in after years sawing trees down.* 
The heavy frontier axe, (nine-pounder often,) was to them a very 
grievous thing. They became weary and lame ; the discomforts 
of the woods were beyond endurance, and their complaints grew 
longer and more doleful at each sunset. But in a few weeks they 
found themselves deep in the wilderness. The roaring of torrents, 
the murmur of huge trees, the echoes of the glens, the precipices, 
at the feet of which ran the creeks, the forests waving on the 
mountains, and crowding the ravines like armies, were sounds 
and sights unknown to the pleasant plains of Germany. When 
it was night, and the awful howling of the wolves all around 
scared the children, or when the crash of great trees, overturned 
by the high and whirling winds of autumn, woke the wives from 
dreams of home, or when the alarmed men, aroused in the mid- 
watches by strange uproars, looked out into the darkness to see 
enormous black clouds sailing over head, and the obscure cliffs 
looming around, while goblins squeaked and whistled in the air, 
and kicked the tents over, then they all gave way to dismal 

*"An old gentleman, who came over the road in an early day, says the 
trees looked as if they had been gnawed down by beaver." — Turner's Phelps 
and Got ham's Purchase. 



6 4 

lamentations. The equinoctial storms came on in due time, and 
it was sufficiently disheartening to see the dreary rains pour down 
hour after hour, while the gorges were filled with fog, and vapours 
steamed up from the swollen torrents, and the mountains dis- 
guised themselves in masks of mist, or seemed, like Laplanders, 
to muffle themselves in huge hairy clouds, and to pull fur-caps 
over their faces. No retreat could be hoped for. Behind them 
were the clamorous creeks which they had forded, and which, 
like anacondas, would have swallowed the whole colony but for 
the Guide, who was wiser than ten serpents, and outwitted them: 
behind them were bears, were owls exceeding cruel, were wild 
men and giants, which were only held in check by the hunter's 
rifle. The Guide was merciless. The tall Pennsylvanians hewed 
the trees, and roared out all manner of boisterous jokes, as if it 
were as pleasant a thing to flounder through the wilderness as to 
sit smoking in the quiet orchards of the Rhine. 

They arrived at the Laurel Ridge of the Alleganies, which 
divided the Lycoming from the head waters of the Tioga. Over 
this, a distance of fifteen miles, the road was to be opened — no 
great matter in itself, surely, but it could hardly have been a more 
serious thing to the emigrants had they been required to make a 
turnpike over Chimborazo. When, therefore, they toiled over 
these long hills, sometimes looking off into deep gulfs, sometimes 
descending into wild hollows, sometimes filing along the edges of 
precipices, their sufferings were indescribable. The Guide was in 
his element. He scoured the ravines, clambered over the rocks, 
and ever and anon the Germans, from the tops of the hills, heard 
the crack of his rifle in groves far below, where the elk was brows- 
ing, or where the painted catamount, with her whelps, lurked in 
the tree tops. Not for wild beasts alone did the hunter's eye 
search. He could mark with pleasure valleys and mill streams, 
and ridges of timber : he could watch the labors of those invisible 
artists of autumn, which came down in the October nights and 
decorated the forests with their frosty bushes, so that the morn- 
ing sun found the valleys arrayed in all the glory of Solomon, 
and the dark robe of laurels that covered the ranges, spotted with 
many colors, wherever a beech, or a maple, or an oak thrust its 
solitary head through the crowded evergreens : he could smile to 



65 

see how the ' ' little people ' ' that came through the air from the 
North Pole were pinching the butternuts that hung over the creeks, 
and the walnuts which the squirrels spared, and how the brisk and 
impertinent agents of that huge monopoly, the Great Northern Ice 
Association, came down with their coopers and headed up the pools 
in the forest, and nailed bright hoops around the rims of the moun- 
tain ponds. The Indian Summer, so brief and beautiful, set in — 
doubly beautiful there in the hills. But the poor emigrants were 
too disconsolate to observe how the thin haze blurred the rolling 
ranges, and the quiet mist rested upon the many-colored valleys, 
or to listen to the strange silence of mountains and forests, broken 
only by the splashing of creeks far down on the rocky floors of 
the ravines. Certain birds of omen became very obstreperous, 
and the clamors of these were perhaps the only phenomena of the 
season noticed by the pilgrims. Quails whistled, crows cawed, 
jays scolded, and those seedy buccaneers, the hawks, sailed over 
head, screaming in the most piratical manner — omens all of 
starvation and death. Starvation, however, was not to be dread- 
ed immediately ; for the hunter, roving like a hound from hill to 
hill, supplied the camp abundantly with game. 

The men wept, and cursed Captain Williamson bitterly, saying 
that he had sent them there to die. They became mutinous. " I 
could compare my situation," said the Guide, "to nothing but 
that of Moses with the children of Israel. I would march them 
along a few miles, and then they would rise up and rebel." 
Mutiny effected as little with the inflexible commander as grief 
He cheered up the downhearted and frightened the mutinous. 
They had fairly to be driven. Once, when some of the men were 
very clamorous, and even offered violence, Patterson stood with 
his back to a tree, and brandishing his tomahawk furiously, said 
" If you resist me, I will KILL, you — every one of you." There- 
upon discipline was restored. 

They worked along slowly enough. At favorable places for 
encampment they built block-houses, or Plocks, as the Germans 
called them, and opened the road for some distance in advance 
before moving the families further. These block-houses stood for 
many years landmarks in the wilderness. September and Octo- 
ber passed, and it was far in November before they completed the 



66 

passage of the mountains. The frosts were keen ; the north- 
westers whirled around the hills, and blustered through the val- 
leys alarmingly. Then a new disaster befell them. To sit of 
evenings aronnd the the fire smoking, and drinking of coffee, and 
talking of the Fatherland, had been a great comfort in the midst 
of their sorrows ; but at length the supply of coffee was exhaust- 
ed. The distress was wild at this calamity. Even the men went 
about wailing and exclaimed, " Ach Kaffee ! Kaffee ! mein lieber 
Kaffee ! " {Oh! Coffee! Coffee ! my dear Coffee!) However no 
loss of life followed the sudden failure of Coffee, and the column 
toiled onwards. 

At the place now occupied by the village of Blossburgh, they 
made a camp, which, from their baker who there built an oven, 
they called "Peter's Camp." Paterson, while hunting in this 
neighborhood, found a few pieces of coal which he cut from the 
ground with his tomahawk. The Germans pronounced it to be 
of good quality. A half century from that day, the hill which 
the guide smote with his hatchet, was " punched full of holes," 
miners were tearing out its jewels with pickaxes and gunpowder, 
and locomotives were carrying them northward by tons. 

Pushing onward seven miles further they made the " Canoe 
Camp," a few miles below the present village of Mansfield. 
When they reached this place, their supply of provisions was ex- 
hausted. The West Branch youths cleared two acres of ground ; 
Patterson killed an abundant supply of game, and went down 
with some of his young men to Painted Post, thirty miles or more 
below. He ordered provisions to be boated up to this place from 
Tioga Point, and returned to the camp with several canoes.* 
He found his poor people in utter despair. They lay in their 
tents bewailing their misfortunes, and said that the Englishman 
had sent them there to die. He had sent a ship to Hamburgh, 
he had enticed them from their homes, he had brought them over 
the ocean on purpose that he might send them out into the 
wilderness to starve. They refused to stir, and begged Patterson 
to let them die. But he was even yet merciless. He blustered 

*Soine of the canoes were made at the camp and some were pushed up 
from Painted Post. Capt. Charles Wolcott, now residing near Corning, 
went up with a canoe and brought down twenty-four Germans. 



6 7 

about without ceremony, cut down the tent-pole with his toma- 
hawk, roused the dying to life, and at length drove the whole 
colony to the river bank. 

Worse and worse ! When the Germans saw the slender 
canoes, they screamed with terror, and loudly refused to entrust 
themselves to such shells. The woodsmen, however, put the 
women, the children and the sick, into the canoes almost by 
main force, and launched forth into the river, while the men fol- 
lowed by land. Patterson told them to keep the Indian trail, but 
as this sometimes went back into the hills, and out of sight of the 
river, they dared not follow it for fear of being lost. So they 
scrambled along the shore as best they could, keeping their eyes 
fixed on the flotilla as if their lives depended on it. They tum- 
bled over the banks ; they tripped up over the roots ; where the 
shores were rocky, they waded in the cold water below. But the 
canoes gliding merrily downward wheeled at last into the Che- 
mung, and the men also, accomplishing their tedious travels along 
the shore, emerged from the wilderness, and beheld with joy the 
little cabins clustered around the Painted Post. 

Here their troubles ended. Flour and coffee from Tioga Point, 
were waiting for them, and when Peter the Baker turned out 
warm loaves from his oven, and der lieber Kaffee steamed from 
the kettles with grateful fragrance, men and women crowded 
around the guide, hailed him as their deliverer from wild beasts 
and perilous forests, and begged his pardon for their bad 
behavior. 

It was now December. They had been three months in the 
wilderness, and were not in a condition to move onward to the 
Genesee. Patterson, with thirty of the most hardy men, kept on, 
however, and opened the road up the Conhocton to Danville and 
the place of destination. The others remained through the win- 
ter of 1793 at Painted Post. " They were the simplest creatures 
I ever saw," said an old lady ; " they had a cow with them, and 
they loved it as if it was a child. When flour was scarcest, they 
used to feed her with bread." 

The whole colony was conducted to the Genesee in the spring; 
There was, at this time, a single settler in the valley of the Con*- 
hocton, above the settlements near Painted Post. The fate of the 



68 

first potato crop of the Upper Conhocton is worthy of record. This 
settler had cultivated a little patch of potatoes in the previous 
summer, and of the fruits of his labor a few pecks yet remained, 
buried in a hole. The Germans snuffed the precious vegetables 
and determined to have them. Finding that they could be no 
more restrained from the plunder of the potato hole than Indians 
from massacre, Patterson told them to go on, and if the owner 
swore at them to say, ii tha?ik'ee, tha?ik''ee,'' y as if receiving a 
present. This they did, and the settler lost his treasures to the 
last potato. The Guide paid him five times their value, and bade 
him go to Tioga Point for seed. 

Once they came unexpectedly upon a single Indian, in the 
woods, boiling a mess of succotash in a little kettle ; and so intent 
was he upon his cookery that he did not observe the approach of 
the emigrants. il 1st das ein wilder mann?" (is this a wild 
man ?) said the Germans, (it was the first savage they had seen,) 
and crowded around him with eager curiosity. He did not once 
look up — perhaps for a display of Indian imperturbability ; but 
Patterson said that the poor barbarian was so frightened at find- 
ing himself suddenly surrounded by a crowd of strangers, "jab- 
bering Dutch," that he dared not lift his eyes. 

After manifold tribulations, the Germans were at last deposited 
at the Genesee, with the loss of but one man, who was killed in 
the mountains by a falling tree. The subsequent fortunes of this 
ill-starred colony can be told in few words.* 

At Williamsburgh, they were abundantly provided for. Each 
family received a house and fifty acres of land, with a stock of 
provisions for present use, and household and farming utensils. 
Cattle and sheep were distributed amongst them, and nothing 
remained for them to do but to fall to work and cultivate their 
farms. Hardly a settlement in Western New York had such a 
munificent endowment as the German settlement on the Genesee. 
But it soon became apparent that the leader of the colony had 
failed to regard the instructions of Mr. Colquhoun. Instead of 
recruiting his numbers from the sturdy and industrious Saxon 
population, as directed, he had collected an indiscriminate rabble 
from the streets of Hamburgh, not a few of whom were vagabonds 

*Turner's Hist, of Phelps & Gorham's Purchase. 



6 9 

of the first water. They were lazy, shiftless, and of the most 
appalling stupidity. Breeding cattle were barbacued. Seeds, 
instead of being planted in their fields, vanished in their kettles ; 
and when provisions were exhausted, Captain Williamson was 
called upon to despatch a file of pack-horses to their relief. The 
emigrants were greatly disappointed in the land which re- 
ceived them, and complained with bitterness of the treachery that 
enticed them from the blessed gutters of Hamburgh, first to starve 
in frightful mountains, and then to toil in hungry forests. 

At length they broke out into open and 'outrageous rebellion. 
Captain Williamson, who was on the ground, was assailed by 
Berezy and the rabble, and 1 as he himself says, "nothing could 
equal my situation but some of the Parisian scenes. For an hour 
and a half I was in this situation, (in a corner of a store, between 
two writing desks,) every instant expecting to be torn to pieces." 
However, with the assistance of a few friends he kept the mob at 
bay, till Berezy at length quelled the tumult. The colonists then 
drove away or killed all the cattle on the premises, and held a 
grand carousal. The mutiny lasted several days, till the Sheriff 
of Ontario mustered a posse of sufficient strength, and descended 
upon them by forced marches, and made prisoner the ringleader. 
Berezy, in the meantime, had gone to the East, where he made 
arrangements for the removal of his colonists to Canada. This 
transfer was at last effected, greatly to the relief of the London 
Association and their agent, to whom the colony had been, from 
the beginning, nothing but a source of expense and vexation. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE SETTLEMENTS OF BATH — GEN. M'CLURE'S NARRATIVE- 

Having conducted his Germans, at last, through the wilder- 
ness, and deposited them in a Canaan where the copper-colored 
Amalekites, and Jebusites, and Hivites, had consented to an ex- 
tinguishment of title, and were behaving themselves with marked 
civility, although a few battalions of discomfited Philistians hov- 
ered sulkily on the Canadian frontiers and glowered from the 
bastions of Niagara and Oswego.* Captain Williamson prepared 
to go up to the forest in person and lay the foundation of a new 
Babylon on the banks of the Conhocton. The enemies of the 
gallant Captain have intimated that instead of making the illus- 
trious city of the Euphrates his model, he studied to attain the 
virtues of Sodom and the graces of Gomorrah, which will be 
shown to be a malicious slander. 

Sixteen miles above the mouth of the Conhocton, the valley of 
the Crooked Lake, uniting nearly at right angles with the river 
valley, opens in the hills a deep and beautiful basin, which pre- 
sents, when viewed from an elevation, a rim often or fifteen miles 
in circuit. The British officer, standing on the almost perpen- 
dicular, yet densely wooded heights above the river, south of the 
old church of Bath (handsomely called in an early Gazetteer, ' ' a 
tremendous and dismal hill,") looked down upon a valley cov- 
ered with a pine forest, except where the alluvial fiats, close at 
the foot of the dark hemlocks of the southern range, supported 
their noble groves of elm and sycamore, and where a little round 
lake shone in the sunlight below the eastern heights. A ring of 
abrupt highlands, unbroken as it seemed, except by a blue gorge 
in the North — the gateway of the gulf of Crooked L,ake — impris- 
oned the valley, and these surrounding hills, to which several 
hundred additional feet of altitude were given by the view from 
the southern wall, rose sometimes to the dignity of mountains. 

*The British did not evacuate those posts till 1796. 



7' 

The prospect is wonderfully beautiful at the present day, from 
that place, where to view his valley the Scottish Captain may 
have (at any rate, ought to have) lain a bed of moss above the 
rocks, which just at the summit jut over the tops of the huge 
rough trees that cling to the side of the hill even to the foot of 
the precipice which surmounts it. But wilder and more beautiful 
was the picture spread out before the Captain's eye. Description 
would recall the scene but feebly. L,et each patriotic citizen, 
however, imagine as he can how all the ranges and ridges, the 
knobs and promontories, were covered with the richness of the 
forest, and consider that pleasant little lake just below the rising 
sun, how it glittered among the deep-green pines, and the little 
river also ; how it wrangled with the huge sycamores that lay 
across its channel like drunken giants, and how it was distressed 
with enormous, frightful roots which clung to its breast with 
their long claws like nightmares, but came forth, nevertheless, 
from these tribulations with a bright face, and sparkled delight- 
fully among the elms and willows. 

In this valley the gallant city-builder determined to found his 
metropolis. Here should all the caravans of the West meet ; here 
should rise mills and stupendous granaries ; here should stand the 
Tyre of the West, sending forth yearly fleets of arks, more in 
number than the galleys of the ancient city, to make glad the 
waters of Chesapeake. Whatever fallacy in his Political Econ- 
omy may have enticed the Scot hither, there is certainly no place 
where the Demon of Business, had he seen fit to build him a den 
in these regions, could have been more pleasantly situated, if such 
a consideration were worthy of the notice of his dusty and bust- 
ling genius. To the propitiation of this Divinity, the wealth of 
the Pulteneys and the labors of their minister were devoted for 
the next two years. Every device that ingenuity could suggest, 
every force that fortune could employ, every experiment that en- 
ergy dared attempt, were tried by the bold and efficient Cadmus 
of the Conhocton to divest the commerce of the West from the 
Mohawk and the Hudson, and to guide it down the Northwestern 
Branch of the Susquehanna. 

Western commerce has unfortunately leaked through another 
tunnel. The Demon which we worshipped, seemed, for a time, 



7 2 

about to yield to our entreaties, and snuffed the incense that 
smoked on our altar with every appearance of satisfaction. As a 
wary bear walks seven times around the trap with suspicious 
eyes, hesitating to bite the tempting bait, yet is sometimes on the 
point of thrusting his nose, at a venture, within the dangerous 
jaws of steel, but finally turns away with a growl, so this wary 
Caliban, after long debating with himself, at last refused to set 
foot on the pretty trap of Captain Williamson, and dug himself 
dens in the north where he might wallow in the mire of canals 
and marshes, and duck his head in the Genesee cataract. The 
political economist, looking at this day from the Roll way Hills, 
beholds a melancholy spectacle. Below him is a valley of farms 
on which a single column of the primitive pines remain like that 
square of the Old Guard which stood for a moment after the route 
at Waterloo. A dark and almost unbroken forest covers the hill 
sides, and he looks down upon the streets and steeples of an idle 
and shady shire town, surrounded by pastures or meadows and 
groves, which has nothing to do but to entertain the county's 
rogues and to supply the citizens with law and merchandise. 
Neither the whistle of the locomotive nor the horn of the canal 
pilot is heard there ; the wolf has hardty deserted its environs — 
hounds yet follow the deer in the woods around it — logs are yet 
tumbled down the rollways above it. No warehouses line the 
river banks — no long ranks of grist-mills grumble that deep har- 
mony so charming to our ears. The gallant Captain's city some- 
how failed to become a city. The wealth that was of right ours 
took to itself wings and flew to the east. Albany and New York, 
being stout and remorseless robbers, plundered us by force. Syra- 
cuse and Utica, being no older than we, stole our riches secretly, 
thieves that they are — (thieves from infancy and by instinct, for 
they stole their very names from a couple of decrepit and tooth- 
less old cities of the other hemisphere, as some young vagabonds 
have just conscience enough to pick the pockets of blind beggars in 
the street) — and to this day those cities stand in the face of all the 
world bedecked with their ill-got finery. The beautiful air-castle 
which shone before the eyes of the Baronet, after promising a 
great many times to become marble, at last bade defiance to 
chemistry, rolled itself up into a shapeless fog, and returned to the 



73 

oxygen from which it came. This is no secret, and to have re- 
served the announcement of it till in the regular course of this 
history it was due would have been unnecessary. No body for 
whom the story is told would have been in suspense — no body 
would have been stunned had the fact been reserved as a kind of 
perorating thunder-bolt. It is so well known to our citizens gen- 
erally that their shire town is a very imperfect type of any of those 
ancient cities heretofore alluded to, and a very modest rival of 
those overgrown and raw-boned young giants suckled by the 
Demon, our enemy aforementioned, along the lakes and canals, 
that one without miraculous ingenuity will despair of working up 
its downfall into any kind of historical clap-trap, to astound or 
terrify. The plot for the subversion of the city of New York 
failed — failed so utterly that but comparatively few living men 
know that it was ever dreamed of. Sixty years after the Scottish 
Captain looked down with great hopes upon the valley of his 
choice, a Senator of the United States, addressing the Legislature 
of this State, guests of the city of New York, in one of the great 
hotels of that metropolis, told them of a traveller's prediction at 
the beginning of this century, that the valley of the Conhocton 
would contain the great commercial city of the west.* The an- 
nouncement was received with laughter by all, and with astonish- 
ment by many. The laughter of the Legislature of 1851 was 
fortunately a thing which seldom occasioned distress to the object 
of it, and the citizens of Steuben County were not in consequence 
so benumbed as to make it necessary for them to discontinue for 
a time their ordinary avocations. 

Founders of cities should always look out for omens , and of all 
ominous creatures they should especially keep a sharp look-out for 
snakes, which are above all things prized by soothsayers. If it 
be true that there is more in serpents than is ' ' dreamed of in our 
philosophy," Capt. Williamson was favored with omens to a de- 
gree unusual even with founders of cities. The Pine Plains, (as 
the valley of Bath was afterwards known,) were infested with 
multitudes of rattlesnakes. Probably there was at that time no 
district in the Western country where these dragons met with 
greater toleration. But, in truth, toleration had little to do with 

* See Chap. 9, for the Speech of Mr. Senator Seward. 



74 

the matter. They had taken possession of the valley, and held it 
by tooth and nail. In length, circumference, ugliness and wis- 
dom, it is safe to say that the rattlesnakes of the Pine Plains chal- 
lenged competition. There was no one to bruise their heads but 
the occasional Indian, and their hideous tribes increased and mul- 
tiplied to a degree truly discouraging to mice and moles. From 
the little fiery serpent with ne'er a rattle in his tail, up to the 
monstrous black and deadly sluggard, coiled under the bush and 
ringing alarms with his twenty rattles, the whole plain was given 
up to them. When Patterson, the hunter, first visited this Para- 
dise, he was startled at their multitude. Gliding from bush to 
bush, slipping under logs, retreating with angry colors before his 
path, — now coiled up under a tree, when hard pressed, and wag- 
ging their heads in defiance, now rattling a tail full of warnings 
beneath the shrubs, this snakish populace inspired the hunter 
with dread. Fairly afraid to go farther by land, he took the rivei 
and waded three or four miles, till he believed himself fully be- 
yond the boundaries of this habitation of dragons. Tradition 
says, that when the plot of the village of Bath was surveyed, the 
number of rattlesnakes killed by the surveyors passed account. 
Tradition, however, has failed to preserve details, and many rare 
' ' snake-stories ' ' are probably lost for ever. These rattlesnakes 
have eluded extermination like the Seminoles. Driven from the 
plains they betook themselves to the mountains, like the illus- 
trious persecuted in all ages. The steep, bold and sandy moun- 
tain, from the summit of which the rising summer sun first shines, 
is the last retreat of these once numerous tribes. Here a few wise 
veterans yet hide in the rocks, and raise infant families under cir- 
cumstances of great discouragement. 

In 1793 Col. Williamson commenced the settlement of his vil- 
lage, called Bath, from Lady Bath of England, a member of the 
Pulteney family. " Before the end of the season," he says, " not 
less than fifteen families were resident in the village. Early in 
the season a saw-mill had been finished, and previous to the set- 
ting in of the winter a grist-mill with a saw-mill nearer the town 
were in great forwardness. ' ' The first mentioned saw-mill stood 
on or near the site of the "Glass-mill," on the Kennedy ville 
road. The grist-mill stood near the bridge. On New Year's 



75 

Day of 1794, a few months after the settlement, Mr. Harry Mc- 
Elwee, a young man from the north of Ireland, made his entry 
into the new-made village, and gives his first impression substan- 
tially as follows : — " I found a few shanties standing in the woods. 
Williamson had his house where Will Woods has since lived, and 
the Metcalfes kept a log-tavern above the Presbyterian Church. 
I went to the tavern and asked for supper and lodging. They 
said they could give me neither, for their house was full. I could 
get nothing to eat. An old Dutchman was sitting there, and he 
said to me : ' Young man if you will go with me you shall have 
some mush and milk for your supper, and a deer-skin to lie on 
with your feet to the fire, and another to cover yourself with.' I 
told him that I thanked him kindly, and would go along. We 
went up through the woods to where St. Patrick's square now is, 
and there the Dutchman had a little log-house. There was no 
floor to it. I made a supper of mush and milk, and laid down 
with my feet to the fire and slept soundly. The Dutchman was 
travelling through to the Genesee, but his children were taken 
sick and he stopped there till they got well." Mr. McElwee, 
now residing on the Mud Creek, is the sole survivor of the young 
men who were with Capt. Williamson in the first years of the set- 
tlement, now living in the town of Bath. Mr. Thomas Metcalfe, 
of Ellicotville, and Charles Cameron, Esq., of Greene, with per- 
haps a few others, survive of the "stout lads" who came up 
with their Captain in '94. 

The trees had, at this time, been cut away only to admit of the 
erection of cabins for the accommodation of the few citizens, and 
to open a road through the forest. In the spring of 1794 Mr. 
McElwee, under the direction of Captain Williamson, made the 
first clearings, being the Pulteney Square and four acres behind 
the agent's house for a garden, for the cultivation of which he 
afterwards imported a gardener from England. The trees on the 
square were chopped carefully and close to the ground. A single 
pine was left standing in front of the agency house for a Liberty 
Tree. It was trimmed so as to leave a tuft at the top, and stood 
nodding defiance at despotism for several years, when it was 
blown down in a storm. The chopper of the Pulteney Square de- 
nies the popular tradition, that to get rid of the stumps they were 



7 6 

undermined and buried. Many strange expedients were resorted 
to in those days by persons not trained from their infancy to wood 
craft, to free the earth from the pitch-pine stumps and the oak 
stools which seemed to be more enduring than ' ' brass and pyra- 
mids," but the tradition of the preposterous burial, just alluded to, 
is without foundation. 

For notices of early citizens, and the early operations of Capt. 
Williamson , we refer to the following narrative : 

NARRATIVE, BY GEN. GEORGE m'CLURE, LATE OF ELGIN, ILLI- 
NOIS. 

Some sixty years since Western New York was a howling wil- 
derness, inhabited by Indians and wild beasts. Where the City 
of Utica now stands was considered in those days the extreme 
western frontier; all west of that place had been partially ex- 
plored by civilized man. It was considered imprudent and dan- 
gerous to attempt a journey into that wild region. " After 
Oliver Phelps had purchased of Massachusetts the pre-emptive 
right to a large tract of land in Western New York, he made 
preparations to visit and explore that wild region ; his neighbors 
called upon him to take a last farewell, as they never expected to 
see his face again." 

[Note. — The following reminiscences were prepared in the summer of 
1850, at the request of the publishers, by Gen. McClure, who resided at that 
time in Blgin, Illinois, at the age of So years, and were submitted by him, 
with unlimited license to alter and amend. They might perhaps be disposed 
more advantageously to the order of history if broken up and used in ex- 
tracts as occasion required, but the narrative will probably be more accept- 
able as here presented than in any other shape. A few extracts have been 
inserted in other places. With these exceptions the narrative is almost un- 
altered. Gen. McClure is necessarily the hero of his own story, and in his 
private instructions to the publishers desired it to be so altered that every 
appearance of sounding his own trumpet might be avoided. The editor was 
unwilling to make any changes except in a few passages which been con- 
densed. The language is fresh and graphic, and the narrative gives a lively 
picture of the early business of the county. Passages, declaratory of Gen. 
M.'s opinions on politics, it was deemed absolutely indispensable to omit. 
It is proper, however, to say that he avowed himself to be a staunch free- 
soiler, a radical temperance man, and a firm believer in the future glory of 
the United States. These reminiscences are given from memory. Gen. M. 
lost his papers by fire.] 



77 

Much has been written, since those days, of the far famed 
west. * * * * But it may now be asked what has become 
of it. Has it eloped or absconded like the wandering savage 
tribes that once possessed that goodly land? Yes, truly, it is 
gone, and now like the Children of Israel of old, it has reached' 
the promised land, not a land flowing with milk and honey only, 
but also with gold, silver, and precious stones. The great Pacific 
Ocean is its boundary. Here I take my leave of the Far West, 
and return to old Steuben, to give some account of the hardy and 
enterprising pioneers who were the first settlers in that wild and 
uncultivated region. 

Rev. James H. Hotchkin in his "History of the Presbyterian 
Church in Western New York," makes some severe strictures on 
the character of Capt. Williamson and his settlers. He says, 
" They were principally from Europe or the States of Maryland 
and Virginia, with a sprinkling of Yankees, who came to make 
money." "The state of society " he remarks, " was very disso- 
lute. The Sabbath was disregarded. Drinking, gambling, 
carousing, horse-racing, attending the theatre, with other con- 
comitant vices were very general, and numbers of those who 
moved in the high circle were exceedingly depraved." I do not 
know from what source such information was obtained ; but this 
I know, that the Sabbath was not desecrated in the village oi 
Bath in the manner that he represents. We had but two public 
houses in that village for many years. One was kept by the Met- 
calfe family, and the other by old Mr. Cruger, and after him by 
Mr. Bull. Neither of these houses suffered gambling and carous- 
ing on the Sabbath. Nor did I ever hear of a horse-race on the 
Sabbath in Bath, nor of theatrical amusements on that day. 
There were not more than four or five families from Maryland and 
Virginia that settled in Bath ;* the other part of our population 
were at least one half Yankees, and the other half foreigners and 
Pennsylvanians. Now I would say that instead of a " sprinkling 
of Yankees," we had a heavy shower of them. I do not believe, 
however, that they were a fair sample of the sons of the Pilgrims, 

* Major Presley Thornton, who was the first occupant of the great Spring- 
field House, a mile and a half below Bath, and Capt. William Helen, two 
Virginians, were the principal Southern men who located at Bath. 



78 

for a good many of them, to say the least, were no better than 
they should be. I trust that nothing in my remarks will be con- 
sidered invidious. I do not intimate by any means that Rev. Mr. 
Hotchkin would knowingly state an untruth, but that he has not 
been correctly informed in relation to the character of a large pro- 
portion of the early settlers. I admit that many were very loose 
in their morals, "lovers of pleasure, more than lovers of God." 
In the year 1807, we employed the Rev. John Niles to preach for 
us half his time, and the other half in Prattsburgh. I believe he 
was a good man, but not well qualified to reform so dissolute and 
heathenish a body of men as composed Capt. Williamson's first 
settlers (according to the popular account of us). 

Among the number of the most respectable Scotch emigrants 
were Charles Cameron and Dugald, his brother. These two young 
men were first-rate specimens of the Scotch character for intelli- 
gence and integrity, as well as for other amiable qualities. 
Charles Cameron was a merchant, and the first to open a store in 
Bath. He was also the first post-master by appointment of Capt. 
Williamson, who paid all expenses of transporting the mail once 
a week to and from Northumberland.* Some fifteen or twenty 
years after he obtained the appointment of sub-agent of the 
Hornby estate from John Greig, Esq., of Canandaigua, the chief 
agent. He moved to the village of Greene, in Chenango County, 
where he still resides. Few men possessed stronger intellectual 
powers than Dugald Cameron. He was highly respected by all 
classes of his neighbors and acquaintances. He was a clerk in the 
L,and Office for some time until he and Gen. Haight were appointed 
sub-agents by Col. Troup. He was a great favorite of the people 
of Steuben. In 1828 they elected him as their representative in 
the Legislature of the State, which appointment with some reluc- 
tance he accepted. While at Albany attending to the duties of 
his station, he was seized with a violent complaint, and after a 
short and painful struggle departed this life, leaving a wife and a 
numerous family of children, most of whom have since died. 

*An old Frenchman lived at the " Blockhouse," on Laurel Ridge, 65 miles 
distant from Bath. Thomas Corbitt, the mail rider in '94, went thither 
weekly for the Steuben County bag. 



79 

His death was lamented by all his relations, friends, and acquaint- 
ances. 

Andrew Smith, a trustworthy Scotchman, had the charge of the 
farming operations of Capt. Williamson ; such as the clearing of 
the land for cultivation ; and all other kinds of labor were com- 
mitted to his charge. He had generally from thirty to fifty men, 
and sometimes more, in his employ, and I had nearly as many in 
the house-building department. Muckle Andrew (as we called 
him, being a large man,) and myself were great cronies. We 
were both single men and kept bachelors' hall. We generally 
met on Saturday evenings, alternately, in each others' apartments. 
We had, in those days, plenty of the joyful, but we seldom car- 
ried matters so far as to get decently tipsy. We violated no 
pledge, for even ministers of the gospel and deacons, in those 
days, kept on their side-boards a full supply of the best Cogniac, 
wine and old whiskey ; and when they got out of those articles, 
they would make very decent and * * * * But 
I must return for a moment to my good friend Muckle Andrew, 
and relate how we used to spend the evenings of our social meet- 
ings. The first topic of conversation was the business of the 
past week, and what progress we had made in our respective 
vocations. The next business in order was a drink, then a story 
or a song. Andrew told the stories, and I did the singing. My 
songs were generally the productions of Burns, such as, "Scots 
wha ha' wV Wallace died," " Who'll be king but Charlie,'' 1 and 
"Azcld Lang Syne." The last verse we always sung standing. 
My good friend Andrew - had one favorite standing toast, which 

was as follows : 

"Here's to mysel', co' a' to my sel', 
Wi' a' my heart here's to me; 
Here's to mysel', co' a' to mysel', 
And muckle guidimay it do me." 

There were a number of respectable young men, natives of 
Scotland, arrived in Bath in the years '93 and '94, amongst whom 
was Hector McKenzie, said to be the son of a Scotch Laird, who 
was employed as a Clerk in the Land Office. Of him I have noth- 
ing to say, only that he felt himself a good deal taller than other 
young men ; and although otherwise respectable, I discovered 
that he did not possess any of the amiable qualities of his coun- 



8o 

trymen, the Camerons, and not a particle of the courtesy and 
unassuming manners of his employer, Capt. Williamson.* 

John Greig, Esq., (now of Canandaigua, and chief agent of 
the Hornby estate,) arrived about the same time, a young man of 
fine talents, a lawyer by profession. He did not make Bath his 
place of permanent residence, but he often paid us a visit, and we 
were always glad to see him, and never allowed him to depart 
without having a real jovial old-fashioned thanksgiving. 

Also, about this time, arrived Robert Campbell and Daniel 
McKenzie, both respectable mechanics. They have both lately 
departed this life. Mr. Campbell, {though one of Williamson s 
first settlers,) was sober and industrious, and a worthy member of 
the Presbyterian Church. There was also old Mr. Mullender, 
with a very interesting family, who settled on a farm of Capt. 
Williamson's near Bath. They were from Scotland, and removed 
afterwards to the Old Indian Castle, near Geneva. 

I must now take leave of my Scotch friends, while I talk a 
little about my own dear countrymen, as well as of some of the 
sons of the pilgrims. 

Henry McElwee, and William, his brother, Frank Scott, 
Charles McClure, Gustavus Gillespie, and Brown, his brother. 
Samuel and John Metier, with large families of children — those, 
with many others whose names I do not now recollect, were natives 
of the North of Ireland, whose ancestors were of Scotch descent. 
They are all dead and gone long since, with the exception of 
Henry McElwee, who is yet alive and resides on his farm at Mud 
Creek. He was an honest, sober, industrious, hard-working man, 
and had the confidence and patronage of Capt. Williamson. 

William Dunn, a native of Pennsylvania, came to Bath in the 
spring of 1793, and kept for a short time a house of entertainment. 
He was appointed High Sheriff of the County after its organiza- 
tion. He was a very gentlemanly man. He entered largely into 
land speculation without capital, and like many others, his vision- 
ary prospects soon vanished, and wound him up. He moved to 
Newtown, where he shortly after died. Mr. Dunn had two 
brothers, who came to Bath with him, or shortly after, Robert 
and Joseph. The former was called Col. Dunn. This military 

* He died in the West Indies. 



title he obtained on his way from York County, in Pennsylvania, 
to Bath. He was one of a company of adventurers and specula- 
tors, who agreed that they should introduce each other by certain 
assumed titles. Some Judges, others Generals, Colonels, Majors, 
but none below the grade of Captain. This Col. Dunn would 
pass anywhere as a gentleman of the first rank in Society. 

Old Mr. Cruger moved from Newtown to Bath, and kept the 
house lately occupied by Wm. Dunn, on the southeast corner of 
the public square. Mr. Cruger, I understood, was a native of 
Denmark — a very pleasant man, full of anecdote and mother wit- 
He was the father of Gen. Daniel Cruger. Gen. Cruger was a 
lawyer, and was highly respected by his fellow-citizens. He 
represented the people of Steuben County in the State legislature 
several years, and also the District in the Congress of the United 
States. He served with me in Canada, in the campaign of 1813, 
as a Major of Infantry, and was a faithful and vigilant officer. 
Some years since he removed to the State of Virginia, and died 
there. 

But I am violating my own rule in spinning out such long 
yarns. My locomotive being on the high pressure system, I find 
it difficult to arrest its progress. When I come to speak of the 
trade and commerce of Mud Creek, and the Conhocton and Can- 
isteo Rivers, which then wormed their way over sand-bars and 
piles of drift-wood into the Chemung River, I shall have some- 
thing more to say of the enterprise of Mr. Bartles, and of his son 
Jacob, and son-in-law, Mr. Harvey. 

The town of Prattsburgh was settled with Yankees. They 
were truly men of steady habits and correct morals. For further 
particulars I refer the reader to Rev. James H. Hotchkins' book 
in relation to the inhabitants of that town. 

I have said nothing of the inhabitants of the town of Wayne, 
and, with a few exceptions, would beg leave to be excused. Dr. 
Benjamin Welles moved from Kinderhook, N. Y. , to that town 
in 1798, if I am correctly informed. He had a numerous family 
of children. Dr. Welles was a surgeon in the army of the Revo- 
lution and part of the time belonged to Gen. Washington's staff. 
He died in 181 2. 

Gen. William Kernan, an Irishman by birth, moved into Steu- 



82 

ben, I think about the year 1800, and settled in the town of 
Tyrone. He is an active politician of the Democratic party, but 
whether he is Hunker or Barnburner I am not able to say. Gen. 
Kernan has been a popular man in the county, and the people 
have conferred on him from time to time manj r important offices.* 

A brief sketch of my own history will doubtless be expected. 
From the consideration that I have been one of the principal 
actors amongst the first settlers in Steuben County, and that I 
have undertaken to be the biographer of other men's lives, I can 
see no impropriety in giving a sketch of my own. I approach 
the subject with all due modesty, divesting myself of anything 
that might have the appearance of egotism ; for it cannot be sup- 
posed that I have any ambitious views or propensities to gratify, 
either politically or otherwise, at my advanced time of life. 

I was born in Ireland, in the year 1770 ; my ancestors emigrated 
from Scotland, and settled not far from the city of Londonderry. 
They belonged to a religious sect called Covenanters, who for 
conscience sake had to fly from their country to a place of greater 
safety, and out of the reach of their cruel and bigoted persecutors. 
I was kept at school from the age of four years to fifteen. The 
character and qualifications of those Irish pedagogues, to whom 
the education of youth was then committed, is not generally 
understood in this country. They were cruel and tyrannical in 
the mode and manner of chastising their pupils. Their savage 
mode of punishment, for the least offence, was disgraceful. 

After leaving school, I chose to learn the trade of a carpenter, 
and at the age of twenty I resolved to come to America. I there- 
fore embarked on board the ship Mary of Londonderry, for Balti- 
more. We made a quick and pleasant voyage of five weeks. I 
landed in Baltimore the first week in June, in good health and 
spirits. The whole of my property consisted of three suits of 
clothing, three dozen of linen shirts, and a chest of tools. As 
soon as I landed, I stepped into a new building, where a number 

* Mr. John Faulkner, of the eastern part of the State, settled at an early 
day in Painted Post where he died. Dr. James Faulkner, his son, an emi- 
nent physician, and a public man of sagacity and eccentricity, lived at Mud 
Creek. He was first Judge of the County Court, from 1804 to 1813. Mr. 
John Faulkner, a brother of Dr. Faulkner, settled on a farm five miles north 
of the village of Bath. Two other brothers, Daniel and Samuel, settled at 
Dansville. 



83 

of carpenters were at work, and inquired for the master builder. 
I asked him if he wished to employ a journeyman. He said that 
he did, and inquired how much wages I asked. My answer was, 
that I could not tell ; that I knew nothing of the usages of the 
country, as I had but a few minutes before landed from the ship. 

" Then," said he, "I presume you are an Englishman." 

" Not exactly, sir," I replied. " Although I have been a sub- 
ject of King George the Third, of England, my place of nativity 
was Ireland, but I am of Scotch descent." 

"Ah, well, no matter. Come to-morrow morning and try 
your hand." ' 

I did so, and worked for him two months, when he paid me 
$75. Thinks I to myself, this is a good beginning — better than 
to have remained in Ireland, and worked for two shillings and 
sixpence per day. 

I then determined to see more of the land of liberty ; for at this 
time I had never travelled beyond the bounds of the city. I had 
some relations near Chambersburgh , Pa., and I made prepara- 
tions to visit them. In those days there were no stages, only 
from city to city on the sea-board. All the trade of the back- 
woods was carried on by pack-horses, and some few wagons 
where roads were suitable. I was advised to purchase and rig 
out a pack-horse, but as to do this would use up half my means, 
I concluded to be my own pack-horse, and set out on foot for the 
far west, leaving the heaviest part of my goods and chattels to be 
forwarded by the first opportunity. I made good headway the 
first day, but I had put on too much steam and became foot-sore. 
I stopped for the night at the house of a wealthy German farmer, 
who had a large family of children, males and females, most of 
them grown up. Mine host and his good-looking Frau could 
not speak a word of English. He was very inquisitive, but he 
might as well have talked Hindoo to me as German, as I could 
answer them only in their own way by a kind of grunt and shake 
of the head, which meant " I can't understand." So he called 
his son Jacob (who had been to an English school, and could talk 
a little English,) to act as interpreter. He told his son to ask me 
whence I came, and whether or not I was a forfloughter Irishman 
(that is, in plain English, a d d Irishman.) Thinks I this is 



8 4 

a poser, and I answered judiciously, and I think correctly, under 
all the circumstances. I told him I was a Scotchman, as in Ire- 
land all Protestants go by the name of Scotch or English, as the 
case may be. My Dutch landsman appeared to be satisfied, and 
we had a very social chat that evening to a late hour. The fam- 
ily were all collected, young and old, to hear of the manners and 
customs of the Scotch. They seemed to take a great liking to 
me, and it was well for me that I had become quite a favorite, for 
my feet were so blistered with travelling that I could not move. 
I remained several days till I got over my lameness. When I 
called for my bill I was told that all was free, and was invited to 
remain a few days longer. I set out on my journey, refreshed and 
encouraged by the hospitality and kindness of that amiable Dutch 
family. 

In three days thereafter I reached Chambersburgh, which is 
one hundred miles west of Baltimore. I remained there until the 
spring following, when I discovered in the newspapers an adver- 
tisement, signed by Charles Williamson, offering steady employ- 
ment and high wages to mechanics and laborers who would agree 
to go with him to the Genesee Country. Thinks I this is a good 
chance, and I will embrace it. I set out immediately for North- 
umberland, the head-quarters of Mr. Williamson. On my arrival 
there, I was told that Capt. W. had started with a numerous 
company of pioneers to open a road through the wilderness to his 
place of destination — 140 miles. 

I had some relations and other particular friends and acquaint- 
ances in that country. An uncle of mine, of the name of Moore, 
who came with his family from Ireland in the year 1790, had 
settled near the village of Northumberland. I made Uncle 
Moore's my home until I heard of the arrival of Capt. William- 
son at Bath, when I again made my preparations to set out for 
the land of promise, accompanied by my old Uncle Moore, a man 
who had never travelled more than twenty miles from his old 
homestead in all his life, excepting on his voyage to America. 
I told him that if his object in coming to this country was to pur- 
chase land for himself and his sons, he ought, without delay, to 
go to the Genesee country, where he could purchase first-rate 
•land for one dollar per acre. This was all true, though I was 



85 

somewhat selfish in making the proposition, as I did not like to 
travel alone through the wilderness, liable to be devoured by 
panthers, bears and wolves ; so I eventually persuaded the old 
gentleman to accompany me. The old lady, Aunt Moore, 
packed up provision enough for at least a four weeks' journey. 
We mounted a pair of good horses and set out. We had only 
travelled twenty miles when we came to a large rapid stream or 
creek, which from late heavy rains was bank full. Uncle Moore 
concluded to retrace his steps homeward. I told him I could 
not agree to that. "Why, we will be laughed at." "Well," 
said he, "they may laugh if they please," and would go no 
further. 

" Very well," said I, "If that's your determination, I will re- 
main here until the water falls — but I see a house close by, and a 
large canoe, (the first I had ever seen,) let us go and inquire 
whether it would be safe to swim our horses alongside of it. ' ' 

We were told there was no danger, and two men volunteered to 
put us over. Uncle Moore proposed that I should pass over first 
with my horse, and if I made a safe voyage, to send back for him. 
We landed in safety. I got the old gentleman just where I 
wanted him. He must now go ahead, as his retreat was now cut 
off. In the meantime I had learned that there were two other 
large streams ahead of us. The first, called the Loyal Sock, 
within twelve miles, and the Lycoming, eight miles beyond. We 
went on our way rejoicing until we came to the Loyal Sock. 
There was no inhabitant near. What was to be done. I told 
Uncle Moore we must do one of two things, either swim our 
horses across, or encamp on the bank till the river falls, but I 
thought there was no danger in swimming, as it was a deep stream 
and not rapid. I proposed to go over first, and if I arrived safe, 
he might follow if he thought proper. I gave him directions to 
hold his horse quartering up stream, and seize with his right 
hand the horse's mane, and not look down in the water, but 
straight across to some object on the other side. I passed over 
without difficulty. The old gentleman hesitated for some time. 
At length he plunged in and crossed with ease. We soon after 
arrived at the bank of the Lycoming Creek. That stream was 
high and outrageously rapid. We concluded that it was best to 



86 

wait until it became fordable. We stopped at the house of one 
Thompson, remained there several days, overhauled our clothing 
and provisions, and made another fresh start, and entered the 
wilderness on Capt. Williamson's new road. 

There were no houses between L,yconiing and Painted Post, a 
distance of 95 miles, except one in the wilderness, kept by a 
semi -barbarian — or in other words, a half-civilized Frenchman, 
named Anthony Sun. He did not bear a very good character, 
but we were obliged to put up with him for the night, or encamp 
in the woods. The next night we slept soundly on a bed of hem- 
lock, on the bank of the Tioga River. Next day, about 12 
o'clock, we arrived at Fuller's Tavern, Painted Post. We 
ordered dinner of the very best they could afford, which consisted 
of fried venison and hominey. After dinner we concluded to 
spend the afternoon in visiting the few inhabitants of that neigh- 
borhood, of whom I have before spoken. First we called upon 
Judge Knox, who entertained us with a description of the coun- 
try and his own adventures. We next called upon Benjamin 
Eaton, who kept a little store of goods, and after an introduction 
by Judge Knox to the rest of the neighborhood, returned to our 
hotel and put up for the night. In the morning we started for 
Bath, a distance of eighteen miles. When we reached the mouth 
of Mud Creek, we found that a house of entertainment had been 
erected there, and was kept by one Thomas Corbit, who came 
from Pennsylvania with Williamson's company.* Thomas had 
been a soldier of the Revolution, and could sing an unaccount- 
able number of patriotic songs — Hail Columbia, among the rest. 
Some thirty years after he became poor and helpless. I procured 
for him a pension, through Henry Clay, but he did not live long 
to enjoy it. 

We arrived at Bath and put up at the only house of entertain- 
ment in the village (if it could be called a house). It's construc- 
tion was of pitch-pine logs, in two apartments, one story high, 
kept by a very kind and obliging English family of the name of 

*The first settlers at the mouth of Mud Creek were Thomas Corbit, in '93, 
John Dolson, in '94, and Henry Bush. Capt. Williamson, while on a 
journey from the North, was taken sick, and was so kindly taken care of at 
Dolson 's house, on the Chemung, that he gave Mrs. D. 200 acres of land 
wherever she might locate it, between Painted Post and the Hermitage. 



87 

Metcalfe. This house was the only one in town except a similar 
one erected for the temporary abode of Capt. Williamson, which 
answered the purpose of parlor, dining-room, and land office. 
There were besides some shanties for mechanics and laborers. 

I -called on Capt. Williamson and introduced myself to him as 
a mechanic. I told him that I had seen his advertisement, and 
in pursuance of his invitation, had come to ask employment- 
"Very well," said he, "young man, you shall not be disap- 
pointed." He told me I should have the whole of his work if I 
could procure as many hands as was necessary. We entered into 
an agreement. He asked me when I should be ready to com- 
mence business. I told him that I must return to Northumber- 
land and engage some hands there, and send out tools and 
baggage up the North branch of the Susquehanna River to Tioga 
Point, that being the head of boat navigation. 

I introduced Uncle Moore to him — told him that he came all 
the way to see the country, and that if he liked it, he would 
purchase a farm and move on it with his family. He made a 
selection four miles west of Bath on which some of his family 
now reside. 

We returned immediately to Northumberland, hired a few 
young men carpenters. We shipped our tools and baggage on a 
boat, sold my horse, and we went on foot to Bath, arriving there 
in five days. One more trip was necessary before we could com- 
mence business, as our baggage would be landed at Tioga Point. 
There were no roads at that time through the narrows on the 
Chemung for wagons to pass through with safety ; therefore 
eight of us started on foot for the Point. When we came within 
four miles of Newtown, we discovered a number of canoes owned 
by some Dutch settlers. I purchased four of them. One of them 
was a very large one which I bought of a funny old Dutchman, 
who said his canoe "wash de granny from de whole river up." 
My companions gave me the title of Commodore, and insisted 
on my taking command of the large canoe. I selected as a ship- 
mate a young man by the name of Gordon who was well skilled 
in the management of such a craft. We laid in provision for the 
voyage and a full supply of the joyful. We pushed our little 
fleet into the river, and with wind and tide in our favor, arrived 
at Tioga Point in four hours, a distance of twenty-four miles. 



88 

We shipped our goods, and set out with paddles and long setting 
poles against a strong current. Then came the tug of war. 
Many times we were obliged to land, and with a long rope tow 
our vessels up falls and strong riffles, and in ascending the Con- 
hocton we had to cut through many piles of driftwood. Our 
progress was slow. We made the trip from the Point (fifty- 
six miles) in nine days. It was the hardest voyage that I ever 
undertook. We were the first navigators of the Conhocton river. 
By this time Captain Williamson had erected two saw-mills on 
the Conhocton river, near Bath, and they were in full operation. 
Houses were erected as fast as thirty or forty hands could finish 
them. Captain Williamson called on me and asked me how long 
it would take me to erect and finish a frame building of forty by 
sixteen feet, one and a half stories high, all green stuff. He told 
me that he expected a good deal of company in a few days, and 
there was no house where so many could be entertained. I told 
him if all the materials were delivered on the spot, I would en- 
gage to finish it according to his plan in about three days, or per- 
haps in less time. " Very well, sir," said he, " if you finish the 
house in the time j^ou have stated, you shall be rewarded." I 
told my hands what I had undertaken to do, and the time I had 
to do it in was limited to three days : "I will pay each of you 
one dollar a day extra. We shall have to work day and night. 
What say you boys ?" Their answer was: "We will go it." 
This was followed up by three hearty cheers for Captain William- 
son. Next morning I went at it with thirty hands, and in forty- 
eight hours the house was finished according to agreement. No 
lime-stone had yet been discovered in that region, nor even stone 
suitable for walling cellars, therefore the whole materials for 
building were from necessity confined to timber and nails. 
Captain Williamson paid me $400 for my forty-eight hours' job, 
and remarked that he would not have been disappointed for 
double that sum. He published an account of this little affair in 
the Albany and New York papers. It had some effect of bring- 
ing our little settlement into notice. He also gave orders for the 
erection of a large building of 80 by 40 feet, for a theatre, and 
for the clearing of one hundred acres, around which was made a 
beautiful' race-course, and another on Genesee Flats, near Wil- 
liamsburgh. Such amusements had the effect of bringing an 



8 9 

immense number of gentlemen into the county every spring and 
fall. This was done by Capt. W. in order to promote the interest 
of his employer. Southern sportsmen came with their full- 
blooded racers ; others, again, with bags of money to bet on the 
horses, and a large proportion of gamblers and blacklegs. Money 
was plenty, in those days at least, in and about Bath, and was 
easily obtained and as easily lost. Some men became immensely 
rich in twenty-four hours, and perhaps the next day were reduced 
to beggary. 

Such amusements and scenes of dissipation led to another 
species of gambling called land speculation. Any respectable 
looking gentleman might purchase on a credit of six years, from 
one mile square to a township of land. The title that Captain 
Williamson gave was a bond for a deed at the end of the term, 
provided payment was fully made ; otherwise the contract be- 
came null and void. Those bonds were transferable and the 
speculators sold to each other, and gave their bonds for thousands 
and hundreds of thousands of dollars, which was the ruin of all 
who embarked in such foolish speculations. They became the 
victims of a monomania. Captain W. believed that this specula- 
tion would hasten the settlement of the county, but its tendency 
proved to be the reverse. Besides, it was the ruin of many hon- 
est, enterprising and industrious men. 

Captain W. always advised me to keep clear of laud speculation, 
and I resisted the temptation for more than two years. I was 
doing well enough, clearing several thousand dollars a year, but 
like many others, did not let well enough alone. My father's 
family had arrived in the United States, and had settled in the 
county of Northumberland, Pa., and I started in the fall of 1794 
to visit them. On my way there, I met with one of those specu- 
lating gentlemen with whom I was acquainted. He offered me a 
great bargain, as I supposed, of half a Township, or 12,000 acres. 
It was the south half of Township No. 6, now called South Dans- 
ville. I agreed to pay him for his right twenty-five cents per 
acre, and paid him $1,000 in hand — and gave him my notes for 
the payment of the balance in annual payments. I went on to 
New York city where a few had been lucky enough to make good 
sales. I employed an auctioneer, and offered my lands for sale to 
the highest bidder at the Tontine Coffee House. It was knocked 



go 

off at my own bid. I returned sick enough of land jobbing, but 
held on to my land until the next races in Bath, when I made a 
sale to one Mr. John Brown, a very respectable merchant and 
farmer of Northumberland Co., Pa. He paid me in merchandise 
$1,000, and gave his bonds for the balance. He shortly after 
failed in business, and I lost the whole of my hard earnings. 

The next project that claimed his attention was the improve- 
ment of our streams. They were then called creeks, but when 
they came to be improved, and were made navigable for arks and 
rafts, their names were changed to those of rivers. The Colonel 
ordered the Conhocton and Mud Creek to be explored by a com- 
petent committee, and a report to be made, and an estimate of 
the probable expense required to make them navigable for arks 
and rafts. The report of the committee was favorable. A num- 
ber of hands were employed to remove obstructions and open a 
passage to Painted Post — which was done, though the channel 
still remained very imperfect and dangerous .* The question was 
then asked, who shall be the first adventurer ? We had not as yet 
any surplus produce to spare, but lumber was a staple commodity, 
and was in great demand at Harrisburg, Columbia, and Balti- 
more. I therefore came to the conclusion to try the experiment 
next spring. I went to work and built an ark 75 feet long and 16 
feet wide, and in the course of the winter got out a cargo of pipe 
and hogshead staves, which I knew would turn to good account 
should I arrive safely at Baltimore. All things being ready, with 
cargo on board, and a good pitch of water and a first-rate set of 
hands, we put out our unwieldy vessel into the stream, and away 
we went at a rapid rate, and in about half an hour reached 
White's Island, five miles below Bath. There we ran against a 
large tree that lay across the river. We made fast our ark to the 
shore, cut away the tree, repaired damages, and next morning 
took a fair start. It is unnecessary to state in detail the many 
difficulties we encountered before we reached Painted Post, but 
in about six days we got there. The Chemung River had fallen 
so low that we were obliged to wait for a rise of water. In four 
or five days we were favored with a good pitch of water. We 

* The Conhocton was declared navigable above Liberty Corners. The first 
attempt at clearing the channel was made on the strength of a fund of $700, 
raised by subscription. 



9i 

made a fresh start, and in four days ran 200 miles, to Mohon- 
tongo, a place 20 miles from Harrisburgh, where, through the 
ignorance of the pilot, we ran upon a bar of rocks in the middle 
of the river, where it was one mile wide. There we lay twenty- 
four hours, no one coming to our relief or to take us on shore. 
At last a couple of gentlemen came on board, and told us it was 
impossible to get the ark off until a rise of water. One of the 
gentlemen enquired, apparently very carelessly, what it cost to 
build an ark of that size, and how many thousand staves we had 
on board. I suspected his object, and answered him in his own 
eareless manner. He asked if I did not wish to sell the ark and 
cargo. I told him I would prefer going through if there was any 
chance of a rise of water — that pipe staves, in Baltimore, were 
worth $80 per thousand, but if you wish to purchase, and will 
make me a generous offer, I will think of it. He offered me 
$600. I told him that was hardly half the price of the cargo at 
Baltimore, but if he would give me $800 I would close a bargain 
with him. He said he had a horse, saddle and bridle on shore, 
worth $200, which he would add to the $600. We all went on 
s ore. I examined the horse, and considered him worth the $200. 
We closed the bargain, and I started for Bath. I lost nothing by 
the sale, but if I had succeeded in reaching Baltimore, I should 
have cleared $500. 

The same spring, Jacob Bartles, and his brother-in-law Mr. 
Harvey, made their way down Mud Creek with one ark and some 
rafts. Bartles' Mill Pond and Mud Lake afforded water sufficient 
at any time, by drawing a gate, to carry arks and rafts out of the 
creek. Harvey lived on the west branch of the Susquehanna, 
and understood the management of such crafts. 

Thus it was ascertained to a certainty, that, by improving those 
streams, we could transport our produce to Baltimore — a distance 
of 300 miles — in the spring of the year, for a mere trifle. 

In the year 1795 I went to Albany on horseback. There was 
no road from Cayuga Lake to Utica better than an Indian trail, 
and no accommodations that I found better than Indian wigwams. 
It may save me some trouble if I tell what took me there, and all 
about my business. I volunteered to give a history of my own 
life, and I shall redeem my pledge so far as my memory will 
enable me to do so. I had got it into my head to dispose of my 



92 

chest of tools, and turn merchant. I therefore settled my accounts 
with Col. Williamson. He gave me a draft on a house in Albany 
for $1,500, accompanied by letters of recommendation. I laid in 
a large assortment of merchandise, and shipped them on board a 
Mohawk boat. Being late in the fall the winter set in, and the 
boat got frozen up in the river about thirty miles west of Sche- 
nectady, at a place called the Cross Widoiv's, otherwise called the 
Widow Veeder's. Here the gooods lay for about two months y 
till a sleigh-road was opened from Utica to Cayuga Lake. About 
the last of January I started with sleighs after my goods, and in 
two weeks arrived at Bath. 

I have already mentioned that Col. Williamson expended a 
good deal of money in improving a number of farms, and erecting 
a number of buildings on them, which gave employment to many 
hands.* These hands were my best customers, and paid up their 
accounts every three months by orders on Williamson ; but orders 
came from England to stop such improvements, and shortly after 
Col. W. resigned his agency. Those tenants and laborers got in 
my debt, at this time, about $4,000, and in one night the whole 
of them cleared out for Canada. They were a sad set of unprin- 
cipled scamps. They were a part of that ' ' sprinkling of Yankees 
that came to make money." There was not one foreigner, nor a 
Virginian, nor a Mary lander amongst them. They were a part of 
the first settlers in the town of Wayne. I waited some time till 
they got settled down in Upper Canada, and then started to pay 
them a visit. At that time there were no white inhabitants be- 
tween Genesee River and Niagara, a distance of about 90 miles. 
I lodged one night with the Tonnewanta Indians, and the next 
day crossed the river to Newark. I found some of my customers 
at York or Toronto, and some at the Bay of Canty. I employed 
a lawyer named McDonald, who advised me to get all I could 
from them in the first place, and he would undertake to collect 
the balance if they were worth it. They paid me about $200. I 

* Several of the Haverling, Brundage and Faulkner farms, north of the vil- 
lage of Bath, were cleared by Capt. W. He built large framed barns on 
them, and set tlerl them withitenants. The scheme was a failure. The soil, 
even at that early day, declared its abhorrence of estates other than for fee 
simple After Capt. W. 's departure, the farms were almost hopelessly over- 
run with oak brush. 



93 

heard that some of them had gone up Lake Erie, and were in De- 
troit. I re-erossed Lake Ontario, went to Fort Erie, and up the 
lake in the old U. S. brig Adams. She was the only vessel on 
the lake, except one small schooner. I was nine days on the 
passage. I found some of my runaways at Detroit, but did not 
receive one cent of them. I set my face homewards — was taken 
sick on my passage down the lake, and lay six weeks at Fort 
Erie. The physicians pronounced my case hopeless, but owing 
to the kindness and attention of Mrs. Crow, my landlady, and of 
Col. Warren, the commissary of the garrison, I recovered. I at 
length reached home, after an absence of three months. My law- 
yer McDonald was shortly after drowned in crossing the lake. It 
was the last I heard of him or of my papers. 

My next start in business was attended with a little better suc- 
cess. My brother Charles kept a small store in Bath, and in the 
year 1800 we entered into partnership. I moved to Dansville, 
opened a store, an'd remained there one year. I did a safe busi- 
ness, and took in that winter 4,000 bushels of wheat and 200 bar- 
rels of pork — built four arks, at Ashport, on the Canisteo River, 
and ran them down to Baltimore. These were the first arks that 
descended the Canisteo. My success in trade that year gave me 
another fair start. My brother, in the mean time, went to Phil- 
adelphia to lay in a fresh supply of goods for both stores ; but on 
his way home he died very suddenly at Tioga Point. He had 
laid in about $30,000 worth of goods. I returned to Bath with 
my family — continued my store at Dansville — opened one at Penn 
Yan, and sent a small assortment to Pittstown, Ontario County. 

At this time I purchased the Cold Spring Mill site, half way 
between Bath and Crooked Lake, of one Skinner, a Quaker, with 
200 acres of land, and purchased from the Land Office and others 
about 800 acres, to secure the whole privilege. Here I erected a 
flouring-mill, saw-mill, fulling-mill and carding machine. I per- 
ceived that wheat would be the principal staple of the farmers, 
and I also knew from experience that there would be great risk 
in running wheat to Baltimore down a very imperfect and danger- 
ous navigation, and the risk in running flour, well packed, com- 
paratively small. The flouring mill, with two run of stones, I 
completed in the best manner in three months. I sent handbills 



94 

into all the adjoining counties, offering a liberal price for wheat 
delivered at my mills, or at any stores in Dansville, Penn Yan 
and Pittstown. I received in the course of the winter 20,000 
bushels of wheat, two-thirds of which I floured and packed at my 
mills ; built in the winter eight arks at Bath, and four on the 
Canisteo. In the spring I ran the flour to Baltimore, and the 
wheat to Columbia. The river was in fine order, and we made a 
prosperous voyage and a profitable sale. I cleared enough that 
spring to pay all my expenditures and improvements on the Cold 
Spring property. After disposing of my cargo, I went to Phila- 
delphia and settled with my merchants, laid in a very extensive 
assortment of goods, loaded two boats at Columbia, and sent 
them up the river to Painted Post. 

My next project was to build a schooner on Crooked Lake, of 
about thirty tons burden, for the purpose of carrying wheat from 
Penn Yan to the head of the lake. I advertised the schooner 
Sally as a regular trader on Crooked Lake. The embargo to the 
contrary notwithstanding , (for Jefferson's long embargo had then 
got into operation.) Some of my worthy democratic brethren in 
the vicinity of Pen Yan charged me with a want of patriotism for 
talking so contemptuously of that wholesome retaliatory measure. 
1 received a very saucy and abusive letter from a very large, 
portly, able bodied gentleman of Yates County, whose corpor- 
ation was much larger than his intellect. This famous epistle 
raised my dander to a pretty high pitch, and I answered his letter 
in his own style, and concluded by saying that if Jefferson would 
not immediately raise his embargo, I should go to work and dig 
a canal from Crooked Lake to the Conhocton River, and the next 
he would hear of the schooner Sally would be, that she had run 
in, in distress, to Passamaquaddy or some other Northern harbor. 
This brought our correspondence to a close. 

I erected a store-house at each end of the lake. The vessel 
and store-houses cost me $1,400. The whole, as it turned out, 
was a total loss, as the lake was frozen over at the time I most 
wanted to use it. The farmers did not then carry their wheat to 
market before winter. 

I had given notes the previous winter to the farmers for wheat 
to the amount of about $3,000, payable in June following, but 
after opening my new goods, I took in money fast enough to 



95 

meet the payment of rny notes when presented, which established 
my credit with the farmers throughout the West, far and near. 
There was not at that time any other market for wheat, until the 
great canal was finished as far as Cayuga. Wheat was brought 
to my mill from all parts of Seneca and Ontario Counties and 
the Genesee River. After Col. Troup came into the agency, he 
authorized me to receive wheat from any of the settlers that 
wished to make payments in the land-office, and pay in my drafts 
on the office for the same. 

Indians were very numerous at that time. Their hunting- 
camps were within short distances of each other all over the 
county. The Indian trade was then an object. I hired a chief 
of the name of Kettle- Hoop, from Buffalo, to teach me the Seneca 
language. He spoke good English. All words that related to 
the Indian trade or traffic I wrote down in one column, and op- 
posite gave the interpretation in Seneca, and so I enlarged my 
dictionary from day to day for three or four weeks, until I got a 
pretty good knowledge of the language. I then set out on a 
trading expedition amongst the Indian encampments, and took 
my teacher along, who introduced me to his brethren as seos 
cagena, that is, very good man. They laughed very heartily at 
my pronunciation. I told them I had a great many goods at 
Tanighnaguanda, that is Bath. I told them to come and see me, 
and bring all their furs, and peltry, and gammon, (that is, hams 
of deer,) and I would buy them all, and pay them in goods very 
cheap. They asked me, Tegoye ezeethgath and JVegaugh, that is, 
"Have you rum and wine, or fire water." That fall, in the 
hunting season, I took in an immense quantity of furs, peltry and 
deer hams. Their price for gammon, large or small, was two 
shillings. I salted and smoked that winter about 3,000 hams, 
and sold them next spring in Baltimore and Philadelphia for two 
shillings per pound. At this time there was an old bachelor 
Irishman in Bath, that kept a little store or groggery, by the 
name of Jemmy McDonald, who boarded himself, and lived in his 
pen in about as good style as a certain nameless four- legged ani- 
mal. He became very jealous of me after I had secured the 
whole of the Indian trade. The Indians used to complain of 
Jamie, and say that he was tos cos, that is not good — too much 
cheat Jimmy. When I had command of the army at Fort George, 



9 6 

in Upper Canada, about 600 of these Indians were attached to my 
command. 

The next spring I started down the rivers Conhocton and Can- 
isteo, with a large fleet of arks loaded with flour, wheat, pork and 
other articles. The embargo being in full force, the price of flour 
and wheat was very low. At Havre de Grace I made fast two or 
three arks loaded with wheat to the stern of a small schooner 
which lay anchored in the middle of the stream, about half a mile 
from shore. Being ebb tide, together with the current of the 
stream, we could not possibly land the arks. Night setting in, 
there was no time to be lost in getting them to shore, as there 
was a strong wind down the bay, and it would be impossible to 
save them if they should break loose from the schooner. I left 
the arks in charge of William Edwards, of Bath, whilst I went 
on shore to procure help to tow the arks to shore. Whilst I was 
gone the wind increased, and the master of the schooner hallooed to 
Edwards, who was in one of the arks, that he would cut loose, as 
there was danger that he would be dragged into the bay and get 
lost, and he raised his axe to cut the cables. Edwards swore if 
he cut the cables he would shoot him down on the spot, and 
raising a handspike, took deliberate aim. It being dark, the 
Captain could not distinguish between a handspike and a rifle. 
This brought him to terms. He dropped the axe, and told Ed- 
wards that if he would engage that I should pay him for his 
vessel in case she should be lost, he would not cut loose. Edwards 
pledged himself that I would do so. 

When I got on shore, I went to a man named Smith, who had 
a fishery, and a large boat with eighteen oars, and about forty 
Irishmen in his employ, and offered to hire his boat and hands. 
He was drunk and, told me with an oath, that I and my arks 
might " go to the d — 1." He would neither let the boat nor his 
hands go. I went into the shanty of the Irishmen, and putting 
on an Irish brogue, told them of my distress, ' ' The d — 1 take 
Smith, we will help our countryman, by my shoulboys," said the 
leader. They manned the boat, and the arks were brought to 
the shore in double-quick time. They refused to take pay, and I 
took them to a tavern and ordered them as much as they chose to 
drink. My friend Edwards and those jolly Irishmen saved 



97 

my arks and cargo. Edwards is yet alive, and resides in Bath * 

The loss I sustained in flour and wheat this year was great, but 
I did not feel it to be any serious interruption to my business. On 
my return, I concluded that I must suspend the purchase of wheat 
while that ruinous measure, the embargo, was in force, and fall 
upon some other scheme and project. So I opened a large dis- 
tillery, which opened a market to the farmers for their rye-corn, 
and even wheat, which I converted into ' ' fire-water, ' ' as the 
Indians very properly call it. Jefferson's embargo did not injure 
the sale of it, but the contrary, as whiskey was then worth by 
the barrel from eight to ten shillings per gallon, and all men, 
women, and children drank of it freely in those days. I con- 
verted much of my whiskey into gin, brandy and cordials, in order 
to suit the palates of some of my tippling customers. 

I purchased in the fall droves of cattle and sent them to Phila- 
delphia. I also stall-fed forty head of the best and largest cattle 
in the winter, which I shipped on arks to Columbia, and drove 
to Philadelphia, where they sold to good advantage. This mode 
of sending fat cattle to market astonished the natives as we 
passed down the river. It proved to be a profitable business. 

In the year 1814 I sold my Cold Spring Mills to Henry A. 
Towsend for $14,000. I erected other mills at Bath. In 1816 I 
ran down to Baltimore about 1,000,000 feet of pine lumber and 
100,000 feet of cherry boards and curled maple. I chartered 
three brigs and shipped my cherry and curled maple and 500 bar- 
rels of flour to Boston. I sold my flour at a fair price,but my lumber 
way a dead weight on my hands. At length, the inventor of a 
machine for spinning wool by water power, offered to sell me one 
of his machines for $2,500, and take lumber in payment. I closed 
a bargain with him, which induced me to embark in woolen manu- 
facture. I obtained a loan from the state, and was doing well 
until Congress reduced the tariff for the protection of home in- 
dustry to a mere nominal tax. The country immediately after 
was flooded with foreign fabrics, and but few woolen factories 
survived the shock. 

I will now close my narrative, so far as it relates to my own 
business concerns, with a single remark, that although I have 
been unfortunate at the close of my business, yet I flatter myself 
*He died in March, 185 1. 



9 8 

that all will admit that I have done nothing to retard the growth 
and prosperity of the village of Bath, or of the inhabitants of 
Steuben country generally, especially at a time when there were 
no facilities for the farmers of the county to transport their pro- 
duce to market other than that which was afforded them by my 
exertions. And whether the people of Steuben or myself have 
received the most benefit I leave for them to determine. 

It would appear to be of very little consequence for me to state 
the number of civil offices that I held during my residence in Steu- 
ben county. It will only show how far I had the good will of the 
people. First, I was appointed Justice of the Peace; next,aJudgeof 
theCourt of Common Pleas, and Surrogate of the county. In 1816 
I was appointed High Sheriff of the county, which office I held 
four years. I held the office of Post Master of the village of Bath, 
about eight years. The good people of Steuben also elected me 
three years in succession to represent them in the Legislature of 
the State of New York. — For all these favors I felt then, and ever 
shall feel grateful. 

This brief narrative is nothing more than a mere synopsis of 
some of the principal events of my life during the last sixty 
years. I find that all labor, whether of the hand or head, have 
become burdensome, which will be sufficient apology for its 
insufficiencies. 

Note. — Gen. McClure, at the'Jage of 64 again started "in pursuit of the 
Far West," which he says "had got a thousand miles ahead of me," and 
located at Elgin, in Illinois, where he resided until his death in the summer 
of 1851. 



CHAPTER VI. 

CAPTAIN WILLIAMSON'S ADMINISTRATION — LIFE AT BATH — 
GRAND SIMCOE WAR — RACES — THEATRE — VINDICATION OF 
THE ANCIENTS — BATH GAZETTE — COUNTY NEWSPAPERS— 
THE BAR — PHYSICIANS. 

Captain Williamson having, toward the close of the last century, 
fairly established himself at Bath, was the greatest man in all the 
land of the West. His dominion extended from Pennsylvania to 
Lake Ontario ; a province of twelve hundred thousand acres owned 
him as its lord ; Indian warriors hailed him as a great chief; set- 
tlements on the Genesee, by the Seneca, and at the bays of 
Ontario, acknowledged him as their founder ; and furthermore,' 
by commission from the Governor of the State of New York, he 
was styled Colonel in the militia of the Commonwealth, and at 
the head of his bold foresters, stood in a posture of defiance 
before the Pro-Consul of Canada, who beheld with indignation a 
rival arising in the Genesee forests, and taking possession of 
land which he claimed for his own sovereign, with a legend of 
New Englanders and Pennsylvanians, mighty men with the axe 
and rifle, and with colonies of Scotch and Irish boys, who cleaved 
to the rebellious subjects of the King. 

His was no idle administration. It did not content him to sit in 
idle grandeur in his sumptuous log-fortress on the Conhocton, 
like a Viceroy of the Blackwoods. feasting on the roasted sides of 
mighty stags, and eating luxurious hominy from huge wooden 
trenchers, with the captains of his host. Neither did he yield to 
those temptations which so often beset and overpower governors 
sent to administer the affairs of distant districts of the wilderness, 
who, instead of collecting tribute from the refractory aborigines, 
and keeping them well hanged, are forever scouring the woods 
with hounds, and beating the thickets for bears, to the great 
neglect of the Royal finances. He galloped hither and thither 
with restless activity — from Bath to Big Tree, from Seneca to 
Sodus, from Canadarque to Gerundigut, managing the concerns 



IOO 

of his realm with an energy that filled the desert with life and 
activity. People heard of hirn afar off — in New England, in Vir- 
ginia, and in Canada. The bankers of Albany and New York 
became familiar with his signature, Englishmen and Scotchmen 
were aroused from their homes and persuaded to cross the ocean 
for Genesee estates, and hearty young emigrants of the better 
sort — farmers and mechanics of some substance — were met upon 
their landing by recommendations to leave the old settlements 
behind them, and try their fortunes in Williamson's woods. 
Pioneers from below pushed their canoes and barges up the rivers, 
and men of the East toiled wearily through the forest with their 
oxen and sledges. Not a few Virginian planters, with their great 
household, abandoned their barren estates beyond the Potomac, 
and performed marches up the Susquehanna valley and over the 
Laurel Ridge in much the same style (saving the camels) as the 
ancient Mesopotamian patriarchs, shifted their quarters — young- 
sters and young ladies making the journey gaily on horseback, 
while the elderly rode in ponderous chaises, secured against 
catastrophes by ropes and props, and the shoulders of their 
negroes. Several such cavalcades came over the Lycoming 
Road. One is yet remembered with some interest by a few, as 
containing a pair of distinguished belles, whose fame went before 
them, and who were met on their descent, half frozen, from the 
mountains in mid-winter, at the Painted Post Hotel, by a couple 
of no less distinguished sprouts of Northern gentility, one of 
whom was afterwards so fortunate as to gain the hand of one of 
the frost-bitten beauties. 

The administration of the affairs of the estate beyond the 
limits of this county, is not, of course, a matter to be treated of 
with propriety in this volume. Much of the agent's personal 
attention was of course required in this, but he made his resi- 
dence at Bath, and to life and doings at the metropolis, our atten- 
tion will for the present be directed. 

Captain Williamson dwelt in his stronghold on the Conhocton, 
in high style, like a baron of old. All the expenses necessary to 
support the state which such a regent should maintain, were 
borne by the boundless fund which he controlled. Gentlemen 
from far countries came up to the woods on horseback, and were 
entertained sumptuously, as the gallant captain's feudal proto- 



IOI 

types were wont to welcome to their castles straggling crusaders, 
pilgrims and foreign knights. There was an abundance of gen- 
tility in the land, both sham and genuine. Sometimes the ad" 
miring wood nymphs, who had heretofore seen only ill-favored 
and bare-backed pagans striding through the forest, beheld a 
solitary horseman, finely dressed in the most approved fashion of 
the cities, trotting down the interminable lane of pines, followed 
at a respectful distance by his servant (a spectacle which this good 
republican county has not seen for many a year), and sometimes 
Captain Williamson himself might be seen dashing in gallant 
style through the woods, with a party of riders from the Hudson 
or the Roanoke, mounted on full blooded horses, while a func- 
tionary from the baronial kitchen brought up the rear, with 
luncheon and a basket of wine. There were, moreover, asses in 
lions' hides, who came down with a great flourish, and passed 
themselves off for real Nubians. A few old settlers have occa- 
sion to remember one of these gentry, a certain captain, " a great 
big man, and a mighty fine gentleman, with ruffles in his shirt, 
and rings on his fingers," who contracted to build Captain Wil- 
liamson's stupendous Marengo barns, and one day went off in a 
portly and magnificent way, without paying his carpenters. 

The Pine Plains were unable to support such courtly person- 
ages, and indeed the good stock of working men and farmers who 
tilled the land, found the soil so ungracious, that they were not 
a little straightened for the means of supporting life. Captain 
Williamson transported his first flour from Northumberland, and 
a quantity of pork from Philadelphia. Afterwards these luxuries 
were obtained as best they could be. Flour was brought on pack 
horses from Tioga Point, and a treaty of commerce was entered 
into with Jemima Wilkinson, the prophetess, who had established 
her oracle on the outlet of Crooked Lake, where her disciples 
had a mill and good farms. The first navigators of Crooked 
Lake carried their cargoes in Durham boats of six or eight tons 
burden, which they poled along the shore, or when favoring 
breezes filled their sails, steered through the mid-channel. 
These primitive gondoliers have lived to see the end of their pro- 
fession. Notwithstanding these resources, the village of the 
Plains was sometimes reduced to great straits. The Canisteo 
boy brought over his bag of wheat on a horse, threw it down at 



102 

the door of the agency house, and was paid five silver dollars the 
bushel. He drove his bullock across the hills, slaughtered it at 
the edge of the village, and sold every thing from hoof to horn 
for a shilling the pound. He led over a pack-horse laden with 
grain, paid all expenses, treated, and took home eighteen dollars. 
One old farmer remembers paying two dollars and a quarter for a 
hog's head, "and it was half hair at that." "Bath was just 
like San Francisco," says an old settler on the comfortable farms 
of Pleasant Valley, " straw was a shilling a bunch, and every 
thing else in proportion. Money was plenty, but they almost 
starved out. They once adjourned court because there was 
nothing to eat. If it hadn't been for the Valley, the Pine Plains 
would have been depopulated. After court had been in session 
two or three days, you would see a black boy come down here on 
a horse, and with a big basket, foraging. He would go around 
to all the farms to get bread, meat, eggs, or anything that would 
stay life. Bath was the hungriest place in creation. You 
couldn't trust a leg of mutton to anybody but the land agent." 

The citizens of the county made court week a kind of general 
gathering time, and the larders of Bath were sometimes speedily 
exhausted. The prudent juryman before setting out from home, 
slung over his shoulders a bag containing a piece of cold pork, 
and a huge loaf of bread ; for no one knew to what extremities 
the ministers of justice might be reduced. 

Nevertheless the affairs of the metropolis went on finely. The 
county prospered. The river was partially relieved of incum- 
brances ; roads were opened ; bridges were built ; farms were 
cleared. In 1796, or about that time, Captain Williamson resort- 
ed to sundry bold devices to arouse the backward people of the 
East, and to spread the fame of his realm throughout the land. 
Before entering upon those subjects, however, there is a martial 
affair which must by no means be lightly passed over — the grand 
Simcoe War of 1794. The memory of this has almost perished. 
Few of the good people know how a high and mighty potentate 
of the North once rose up in wrath against Captain Williamson, 
and threatened to come down upon him with the King's regi- 
ment, to storm his villages, to plant his artillery, if necessary, 
under the ramparts of his stronghold on the Conhocton, and to 
restore the Pine Plains with the rest of Western New York, to 



103 

the Crown of Great Britain. This is really the bloodiest para- 
graph in the annals of Steuben County, and must be carefully 
treasured. 

In a rather stunning explosion of rhetoric, a certain Fourth of 
July orator thus sounds the prelude to a kind of epic anthem, in 
which he indulges, in view of the threatened conflict with the 
Powers of the Pole. " Hark ! what sounds are those which arise 
"from the lowering North ! Lo ! the great Unicorn of Albion 
' ' begins to moan in the forests of Canada, and that other red 
" quadruped which rides rampant upon the British shield, begins 
" to growl in an offensive and impertinent manner from the brist- 
" ling ramparts of Toronto. War's mighty organ murmurs in 
' ' distant caverns, and clouds like black war-elephants, raise their 
" dusk3 r backs out of the waters of Lake Ontario." 

Further quotations from this sonorous document will be 
refrained from. Humbler imagery will suffice to illustrate the 
passage of arms between Captain Williamson and the high and 
mighty Viceroy of upper Canada. It is not generally known to 
our citizens what an enemy arose against us in our infancy, and 
the infant settlement, like a sturdy little urchin, squared itself in 
defiance against the veteran bruiser, who offered to bully it out 
of its rights. 

It is well known that by the treaty of 1783, the British agreed 
to evacuate forthwith all military posts held by them within the 
territory of the United States, the forts at Niagara and Oswego 
were held under various pretexts until the year 1796. Certain 
claims of sovereignty over certain lands in Western New York, 
were asserted by British officers, and their presence, their influence 
over the Indians, and the intrigues of their agents caused much 
apprehension and annoyance to the settlers. Captain Williamson, 
as we have seen, was interested in a settlement at Sodus. On the 
16th of August, 1794, Lieut. Sheaffe, a British officer, called at 
that place, ' ' by special commission from the Lieutenant Governor 
of his Britanic Majesty's province of Upper Canada," and in the 
absence of Captain Williamson, left a letter for him, demanding 
"*by what authority an establishment has been ordered at this 
place, and to require that such a design be immediately relin- 
quished." 

The potentate by whom this order was dictated was Colonel 



104 

Simcoe, an officer, who, we believe, served with some distinction 
at the head of a regiment of loyalists in the Revolution, a gentle- 
man undoubtedly of ability and discretion, and esteemed a good 
Governor by the Canadians, but one who felt sore at the late dis- 
comfiture of the Royal arms, and who appears to have embraced 
the delusion for a long time entertained by British officers of the 
old school, of the possibility of marching through America with 
a brigade of grenadiers. The Duke de la Rochefoucault L,ian- 
court, a French traveller, gives us the key to Col. Simcoe' s char- 
acter and aspirations. — " He discourses with much good sense on 
"all subjects, but his favorite topics are his projects and war, 
"which seem to be the objects of his leading passions. He is 
' ' acquainted with the military history of all countries. No hillock 
' ' catches his eye without exciting in his mind the idea of a fort 
' ' which might be constructed on the spot, and with the construc- 
' ' tion of this fort he associates the plan of operations for a cam- 
" paign, especially of that which is to lead him to Philadelphia." 

Col. Simcoe, then, had a professional hobby. He looked at 
banks and braes with the eye of Major Dalgetty, and believed 
that hills were made for castles, harbors for forts, and knolls for 
" sconces." Of Pharsalia and Agincourt, of the Retreat of the 
Ten Thousand, and the flank movements of Gustavus, of the 
tactics of Gideon and the forays of Shishak, of battering-rams 
and bomb-shells, of torpedos, catapults, pikes and pistols — of 
such was the conversation of Col. Simcoe. Of marching from 
Niagara through the wilderness like a Canadian Hannibal, of 
routing the back-woodsmen and making captive the audacious 
Williamson in his stronghold among the mountains, of emerging 
from the forest with drums, clarinets and feathers, of riding over 
the stupified farmers of Pennsylvania, and trailing his victorious 
cannon through the streets of Philadelphia, of hiding the humili- 
ation of Saratoga in a blaze of glory, and of generally grinding 
to powder the rebellious enemies of the King — of such were the 
dreams of Col. Simcoe. 

As the first step toward the attainment of these magnificent 
results, the Viceroy of His Britannic Majesty stole a barrel of 
flour. 

How this exploit was performed, — whether the storehouse was 
approached after the style of Turenne, and the clerk summoned 



105 

to surrender the key of the padlock, in the words of the Grand 
Turk at Constantinople ; whether hoops were respected and staves 
treated considerately, according to the usages of the Black Prince 
and other mirrors of courtesy, we cannot say, though the Gov- 
ernor undoubtedly overhauled his library and reviewed Rollin's 
History before he attempted a manoeuvre which was probably 
without a precedent in the "military history of all nations." 
The particulars of this fell swoop of the Canadian war-kite do 
not appear in the few books hastily consulted on that subject, — 
loftier matters, the evacuation of forts, the movements of emissa- 
ries, and the correspondence of functionaries, being solely dis- 
coursed of in those. Old settlers, however, aver that a quantity 
of flour belonging to Capt. Williamson was seized by the British 
and carried off. 

Capt. Williamson resented the affront in a spirited manner. 
A sharp correspondence followed between himself and the tres- 
passing parties. The cabinet at Washington took the matter in 
hand. The prospect looked, to the men in the forest decidedlv 
warlike. The "black war elephants," which the orator saw ris- 
ing out of the billows of Ontario, it may be believed, shook their 
bright and glittering tusks with evil purport, while those other 
surly quadrupeds which displayed themselves in such an ill-tem- 
pered manner on the "bristling ramparts of Toronto," undoubt- 
edly indulged in demonstrations equally hostile and alarming. 
Captain Williamson had reason to believe that in the event of 
actual hostilities, the vengeance of Col. Simcoe might seek him 
in his own city. He determined to make ready for the blow, to 
rally the woodsmen, to picket the public square, and to entertain 
the Canadian Hannibal and his legions with such a feast of 
smoke, steel, and sulphur, as those fire-eaters alone could relish. 

Gen. McClure in his manuscript says, " The administration at 
Washington apprised Capt. Williamson of the difficulties that 
had arisen between this country and Great Britain, and required 
him to make preparations for defence. He therefore received a 
Colonel's commission from the Governor of New York, and imme- 
diately thereafter sent an express to Albany for one thousand 
stand of arms, several pieces of cannon and munitions of war. 
He lost no time in making preparations for war. He gave 
orders to my friend Andrew Smith to prepare timber for picketing 



io6 

on a certain part of our village and ordered that I should erect 
block-houses according to his plan. The work went cheerily on. 
We could rally, in case of alarm, five or six hundred, most of 
them single men. Our Colonel organized his forces into com 
panies. I had the honor of being appointed Captain of a light 
infantry company, and had the privilege of selecting one hundred 
men, non-commissioned officers and privates. In a short time my 
company appeared in handsome uniform. By the instructions of 
our Colonel we mounted guard every night, — exterior as well as 
interior. Most of our own Indians, whom we supposed were 
friendly, disappeared, which we thought was a very suspicions 
circumstance."* 

The young settlement, like the infant hero of old, seemed 
likely to be attacked in its cradle by a serpent ; and although the 
backwoodsmen, even of Canisteo, were too considerate to stran- 
gle the British Empire aggressively, and without an act of Con- 
gress authorizing such violence, yet it is quite apparent that had 
this great power seen fit to assail Col. Williamson's little prov- 
ince, the consequences would have been disastrous either to the 
one or the other. Every thing was made ready. Further move- 
ments of those " black war-elephants" and the rest of the hostile 
menagerie were awaited with interest. How soon will the snort- 
ing charger of Simcoe prance upon the banks of the terrified 
Conhocton, while his gloomy grenadiers stride through the forest 
with fixed bayonets and frowns. How soon will the flags of St. 
George flaunt under the Eight mile Tree, or field pieces roar 
under our splintering palisades, while all the Six Nations, yell- 
ing in the under-brush, drive the wolves distracted. The appre 
hension of invasion was probably not very alarming, yet 
sufficiently so to excite patriotism and visions. The lonely 
settler, sleeping in his cabin far in the forest, the loaded rifle 
standing at his bed side, the watchful hounds growling without, 
dreams that his house is assailed by seventy or eighty Esquimaux, 
painted like rainbows, and led on by George the Third in person, 
while Lord Cornwallis supports his sovereign with a ninety -gun 
ship and a bomb-ketch. 

*Mr. Henry McElwee, of Mud Creek, was employed by Col. W. to cut 
white oak saplings eighteen feet long and eighteen inches thick at the butt, 
to be used for palisades, in enclosing the Pulteney Square. A great many of 
these were cut and peeled ready for use. 



107 

All stand waiting for the dogs of war. " The solitary express- 
4 'rider now gallops through the streets of Northumberland, 
"" clatters along the rocky roads, wheels up the Lycoming, climbs 
"the Laurel Bridge and urges his stumbling horse over the 
" rugged German path, descends to the Tioga, hurries along the 
" rivers, and, riding at night into the guarded citadel of the Con- 
" hocton, declares tidings of peace. The lion, grumbling no 
" longer on the ramparts of Toronto, lies down in his lair ; the 
"pacified unicorn ceases to stamp upon the Canadian soil, and 
"the black war-elephants haul in their horns, and sink behind 
" the northern horizon." Such is the peroration of the Fourth 
of July Orator. 

In 1796, Col. Williamson, by way of blowing a trumpet in the 
wilderness, advertised to all North America and the adjacent 
islands, that grand races would be held at Bath. At the distance 
of half a mile from the village, a race-course of a mile in circuit 
was cleared and carefully grubbed, and all the resources of the 
metropolis were brought forth for the entertainment of as many 
gentlemen of distinction and miscellaneous strangers as might 
honor the festival by their presence. But what probability was 
there that such a festival would be celebrated with success in the 
midst of " a wilderness of nine hundred thousand acres ? ' ' From 
Niagara to the Mohawk were but a few hundred scattered cabins, 
and in the south a dozen ragged settlements, contained the great- 
er part of the civilized population till you reached Wyoming. 
But Col. Williamson did not mistake the spirit of the times. 
Those were the days of high thoughts and great deeds. On the day, 
and at the place appointed for the race and the proclamation, sports- 
men from New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore were in attend- 
ance. The high blades of Virginia and Maryland, the fast-boys of 
Jersey, the wise jockeys of Long Island, men of Ontario, Penn- 
sylvania and Canada, settlers, choppers, gamesters and hunters, 
to the number of fifteen hundred or two thousand, met on the 
Pine Plains to see horses run — a number as great, considering 
the condition of the region where they met, as now assembles at 
State Fairs and Mass Meetings. No express-trains then rolled 
down from Shawangunk — no steamboats plowed the lakes — no 
stages rattled along the rocky roads above the Susquehanna. 
Men of blood and spirit made the journey from the Potomac and 



io8 

the Hudson on horse-back, supported by the high spirit of the 
ancients to endure the miseries of blind trails and log taverns. 

The races passed off brilliantly. Col. Williamson himself, a 
sportsman of spirit and discretion, entered a Southern mare, 
name Virginia Nell ; High Sheriff Dunn entered Silk Stocking, a 
New Jersey horse — quadrupeds of renown even to the present 
day. Money was plenty, and betting lively. The ladies of the 
two dignitaries who owned the rival animals, bet each three hun- 
dred dollars and a pipe of wine on the horses of their lords, or, as 
otherwise related, poured seven hundred dollars into the apron of 
a third lady who was stake-holder. Silk Stocking was vie 
torious. 

This, our most ancient festival, is rather picturesque, seen from 
the present day. The arena opened in the forest, the pines and 
the mountain around — the variegated multitude of wild men, 
tame men, rough men and gentlemen, form a picture of our early 
life worthy of preservation. Canisteo was there, of course, in 
high spirits, and throughout the season, with self-sacrificing de- 
votion to the ancient, honorable and patriotic diversion of horse - 
racing, seconded, with voice and arm, every effort of Baron 
Williamson to entertain the country's distinguished guests. 
Young Canisteo went away with mind inflamed by the spirited 
spectacle, and before long introduced a higher grade of sport into 
their own valley. A pioneer of that region, known to the 
ancients as a youth of game and a " tamer of horses," will, at 
the present day, talk with great satisfaction of a Jersey horse, 
which not only bore away the palm in the Canisteo Races, but on 
the Pine Plains, in the presence of men from Washington, Phila- 
delphia and New York, (fifteen hundred dollars being staked on 
the spot by the strangers), distanced the horse of a renowned 
Virginia Captain, who, being a " perfect gentleman," invited the 
owner of the victorious beast and his friends to dinner, and 
swore that nothing was ever done more handsomely even in the an- 
cient dominion. Bath and the neighborhood was, in those days, 
the residence of a sagacious and enterprising race of sportsmen. 
They not only raised the Olympic dust freely at home, but made 
excursions to foreign arenas, sometimes discomfiting the aliens, 
and sometimes, it must be confessed, returning with confusion of 
face. It is told how a select party of gentlemen — Judges, Gen- 



109 

erals, and Captains — once went down to Ontario County " to 
beat the North;" how, after the horses had been entered, an 
Indian came up and asked permission to enter a sorry -nag which 
he brought with him, which with some jeering was granted ; 
how, to the general astonishment, the pagan's quadruped flew 
off with a " little Indian boy sticking to his back like a bat," 
and led the crowd by a dozen rods. The judicial and military 
gentlemen straightway set out for home, each with an insect in 
his ear. The great race-course was not often used, during 
Williamson's time, for the purpose for which it was made, after 
the first grand festival. It was chiefly valuable as a public drive 
for the few citizens who were so prosperous as to keep chaises. 
There was, however, a course on the Land Office Meadows south 
of the village, which was at different times the scene of sport. 

Colonel Williamson further embellished the backwoods with a 
theatre. The building, which was of logs, stood at the corner of 
Steuben and Morris streets. A troop of actors from Philadelphia, 
kept we believe, at the expense of the agents, entertained for a 
time the resident and foreign gentry with dramatic exhibition of 
great splendor. Of these exhibitions we have no very distinct 
account, but the public eye was probably dazzled by Tartars, 
Highlanders, Spaniards, Brigands, and other suspicious favorites 
of the Tragic Muse. The excellencies of the legitimate drama 
seem to have been harmoniously blended with those of the circus, 
and with the exploits of sorcery. We hear of one gifted genius 
who astonished the frontiers by balancing a row of three tobacco 
pipes on his chin, and by other mysterious feats which showed 
him to be clearly in league with the psychologists. 

The race course and the theatre brought the village which 
they adorned into bad odor with the sober and discreet. With- 
out intending to speak of such institutions with more civility 
than is their due, we maintain that in the present case they 
brought upon the neighborhood where they existed, and upon 
the men who sustained them, more reproach than they merited. 
The theatrical exhibitions were but harmless absurd affairs at 
worst. The races were perhaps more annoying evils. People 
are certainly at liberty to think as badly of them as they please, 
but they should consider the spirit of the times, the military and 
European predilections of their founder, and also his object in 



no 

their institution (which of course does not of itself change the 
moral aspect of the matter). Colonel Williamson was inclined to 
hurry civilization. The " star of empire " was too slow a planet 
for him. He wished to kindle a torch in the darkness, to blow a 
horn in the mountains, to shake a banner from the towers, that 
men might be led by these singular phenomena to visit his es- 
tablishment in the wilderness. Therefore, jockeys were switch- 
ing around the meadows before the land was insured against 
starvation, and Richard was calling for '' another horse " before 
the county grew oats enough to bait him. 

Notwithstanding the extenuating circumstances, Baron Wil- 
liamson's village bore a very undesirable reputation abroad — a 
reputation as of some riotous and extravagant youngster, who 
had been driven as a hopeless profligate from his father's house, 
and in a wild freak built him a shanty in the woods, where he 
could whoop and fire pistols, drink, swear, fight, and blow horns 
without disturbing his mother and sisters. This was in a great 
measure unjust. The main employment of the town was hard 
work. " He couldn't bear to have a lazy drunken fellow around 
him," says an old settler speaking of the agent, " and if any such 
came he sent him away." The men of the new country were 
rough and boisterous it is true, but also industrious and hardy, 
and out of such we "constitute a State." It has often been 
flung into our faces as a reproach, that when the first missionary 
visited Bath, on a Sunday morning, he found a multitude assem- 
bled on the public square in three distinct groups. On one side 
the people were gambling, on another they were witnessing a 
battle between two bulls, and on a third they were watching a 
fight between two bullies. We are happy to say that the truth 
of this rascally old tradition is more than doubtful. Aside from 
the manifest improbability that men would play cards while 
bulls were fighting, or that bulls would be trumps while men 
were fighting, the evidence adduced in support of the legend is 
vague and malicious. To suppose that Colonel Williamson's 
ambition was to be at the head of a gang of banditti who blew 
horns, pounded drums, fought bulls and drank whiskey from 
Christmas to the Fourth of July, and from the Fourth of July 
around to Christmas again, is an exercise of the rights of individ- 
ual judgment in which those who indulge themselves should not 



1 1 1 

of course be disturbed. It may be true that sometimes, indeed 
often, a horn or horns may have been blown upon the Pulteney 
Square, at unseasonable hours of the night, in a manner not in 
accordance with the maxims of the most distinguished com- 
posers ; it is not impossible that a drum or drums may have been 
pounded with more vigor than judgment at times when the safe- 
ty of the republic, either from foreign foes or from internal sedi- 
tions, did not demand such an expression of military fervor ; it 
will not be confidently denied by the cautious historian that once 
or twice, or even three times, a large number of republicans may 
have assembled on the village common to witness a battle be- 
tween a red bull and a black one : but from these cheerful ebu- 
litions of popular humor, to jump to the popular conclusion that 
the public mind was entirely devoted to horns, drums and bulls, 
is a logical gymnatic worthy of a Congressman. 

These aspersions upon the character of the early settlers as 
men of honor and sobriety, are repelled with much sharpness by 
the few survivors. "We were poor and rough," say they, 
" but we were honest. We fit and drinked some to be sure, but 
no more than everybody did in those days." 

' ' The man that says we were liars and drunkards, is a liar 
himself, and tell him so from me, will you ? There isn't half the 
honesty in the land now that there was then. Oh ! what miser- 
able rogues you are now. You put locks on your doors, and you 
keep bull dogs, and then you can't keep the thieves out of your 
houses after all ! " 

" I have seen them do in Bath what ye wouldn't do the mor- 
row. When a pack-horse with flour came from Pang Yang or 
Tioga Pint, I have seen the ladies carry it around to them that 

hadn't any. Many and many's the time I have seen the M 's 

and the C 's and their daughters take plates of flour and 

carry them around to every cabin where they were needy. I 
have seen it often, and ye wouldn't do the same at Bath the 
morrow." 

In like manner on the Canisteo, you hear — " People now, 
friend, ain't a comparison to those Ingens. They were simple 
creatures, and made their little lodges around by the hills, three 
hundred Ingens at a time, and never stole a thing. Those 
Ingens came to our houses, and were around nights, and never 



112 

stole the first rag. Now, that's the truth, friend. They would 
snap off a pumpkin now and then perhaps, or take an ear of corn 
to roast, but they were just the simplest and most honest crea- 
tures I ever see. But now, Lord ! you can't hang up a shirt to 
dry but it will be stolen." 

Occasionally there is an expression of contempt at the decay of 
chivalry. "There was men enough then that would have 
knocked a fellow down if he said Boo. It isn't half an affront 
now to call a man a liar or a rascal. If you whip an impudent 
dog of a fellow, you get indicted." 

Captain Williamson further astonished the backwoods with a 
newspaper. In 1796, the Bath Gazette and Genesee Advertiser 
was published by Wm. Kersey and James Eddie. This was the 
earliest newspaper of Western New York, — the Ontario Gazette, 
of Geneva, established in the same year, being the second. We 
have not had the good fortune to find a copy of this ancient 
sheet. Capt. Williamson, in 1798, said, " The printer of the 
Ontario Gazette disperses weekly not less than one thousand 
papers, and the printer of the Bath Gazette from four to five 
hundred." How long the latter artisan continued to disperse 
his five hundred papers we are unable to say. The candle was 
probably a ' ' brief ' ' one, and soon burned out, leaving the land 
in total darkness, till Capt. Smead's Democratic Torch, twenty 
years afterwards, illuminated the whole county, and even flashed 
light into the obscure hollows of Allegany. Of this happy event 
we may take the present opportunity to speak. 

In 1816, Mr. David Rumsey published at Bath the "Farmers' 
Gazette," and Capt. Benjamin Smead started at the same place 
the "Steuben and Allegany Patriot." This sheet is the most 
unquestionable antiquity which the County has produced. 
Though but thirty -five years have elapsed since Capt. Smead 
opened his republican fire on the enemies of human rights, (a 
fire which never so much as slackened for more than a quarter of 
a century,) such have been the improvements in the art of print- 
ing that in comparison with the bright, clean country newspapers 
of 1 85 1, the Patriot looks rasty enough to have been the Court 
Journal of that ancient monarch, King Cole, if it were lawful to 
suppose that the editor would ever have consented to manage the 
"administration organ" of such a rampant old aristocrat. The 



"3 

Patriot differed in several important particulars from our modern 
county papers. Geneva, Olean, and Dansville advertisements 
were important features. The editorial matter was brief, and the 
first page was occupied with advertisements of sheriff's sales and 
the like, instead of such "thrilling thousand dollar prize tales " 
as "The Black Burglar of Bulgaria, or the Bibliomaniac of the 
Jungles," and others of like character, which in our modern 
home newspapers sometimes crowd off even the Treasury Report 
and elegant extracts from the leading journals. The columns 
devoted to news would poorly satisfy the demand of the present 
generation. We think the news cold if forty-eight hours old, 
but then tidings from New York in ten days almost smoked, and 
Washington items two weeks old were fairly scalding. The 
political matter was also of an ancient tone. There was a little 
sparring between Observer and Quietis on the one hand, and some 
invisible enemy on the other who dealt his blows under cover of 
the Ontario Messe?iger. The antiquarian of nice ear will also 
detect antiquity in the rythin of caucus resolutions. It is com- 
forting to the patriotic citizen to think how much cheaper elo- 
quence is now than formerly ; how much easier one can strike 
the stars with his lofty head from the Buffalo platform, the Phila- 
delphia platform, or the Baltimore platform, than from the Buck- 
tail platform and other old-fashioned scaffolds. The style of 
abuse which prevails at present in school-house conventions is 
inclined to be rolling and magnificent ; in the days of the old 
Patriot it was direct and well planted, straight, short, and 
distinct. 

It appears that even then there was a brisk agitation about the 
division of the County. Steuben was like Poland in the clutches 
of the Three Powers. Three ' ' rogues in buckram let drive ' ' at 
it, — Penn Yan in front, and Tioga and Allegany in the flanks ; 
and like a man beset with thieves, the staut old County backed 
against the Pennsylvanian border and "dealt" by the Patriot 
very efficiently. 

In the Patriot of Jan. 19, 1819, occurs the following proclama- 
tion indicative of the spirit of the times during court week. 

GRAND HUNT. 

A Hunting Party will be formed for the purpose of killing 



ii 4 

wolves, bears, foxes, panthers, &c. , to commence on the 20th of 
January, at 7 o'clock A.M., and will close the same day at 3 P.M. 
This being the week of the sitting of the court, gentlemen from 
towns of this vicinity are invited to meet at Capt. Bull's Hotel at 
7 o'clock, on Friday the 15th inst., to aid in completing arrange- 
ments for conducting the grand hunt. 
Bath, Jan. 12, 1819. 

Capt. Howell Bull, 
Appointed Commanding Officer of the day." 

THE BAR, COURT, &C. 

The year 1796 is furthermore a memorable one in our annals r 
for that in the said year was organized that wrangling brother- 
hood, the Steuben County Bar. A few straggling birds of the 
legal feather had alighted on the Pine Plains in the preceding 
year, but were not recognized as constituting a distinct and inde- 
pendent confederacy. These adventurous eagles however found 
themselves in 1796 released from allegiance to the Ontario Bar by 
the act organizing Steuben County, and thenceforth confederated 
for the more systematic indulgence of their instincts, under the 
name and style of the Steuben County Bar. 

A framed court house, and a jail of hewn logs was erected for 
the furtherance of justice, and in the former of these edifices the 
first Court of Common Pleas, held in and for the County of Steu- 
ben, convened on the 21st day of June, 1796. 

The Honorable William Kersey was the presiding Judge. 
Judge Kersey was a grave and dignified Friend from Philadelphia. 
He came to Steuben as a surveyor, and practised that profession, 
and performed the duties of Lord High Chancellor of the county 
for several years, when he returned to Pennsylvania, greatly 
esteemed by the people whom he judged. Abraham Bradley, 
and Eleazer Iyindley, Esqs., of Painted Post, were the Associate 
Judges. 

"Proclamation made, and court opened," says the record. 
"Proclamation made for silence ; commissions to the Judges, Jus- 
tices, Sheriff, Coroner and Surrogate read ; George Hornell, Uriah 
Stephens and Abel White were qualified Justices of the Peace ; 
Stephen Ross as Surrogate." 

The following attorneys and counsellors appeared in due form. 



"5 

Nathaniel W. Howell, (late of Canandaigua,) Vincent Matthews, 
(late of Rochester,) William Stuart who presented "letters patent 
under the great seal of this State, constituting him Assistant 
Attorney General, [District Attorney,] for the counties of Onon- 
daga, Ontario, Tioga and Steuben,") Wm. B. Verplanck, David 
Jones, Peter Masterton, Thomas Morris, Stephen Ross, David 
Powers. 

The first Court of General Sessions was held in 1796. In addi- 
tion to the Judges mentioned in the Record of the Common Pleas, 
offenders against the people encountered the following array 
of Justices of the Peace. John Knox, William Lee, Frederick 
Bartles, George Hornell, EH Mead, Abel White, Uriah Stephens, 
Jr. 

The first Grand Jury was composed of the following citizens : — 
John Sheather, Foreman ; Charles Cameron, George McClure, 
John Cooper, Samuel Miller, Isaac Mullender, John Stearns, Jus- 
tus Woolcott, John Coudry, John Van Devanter, Alexander Ful- 
lerton, Amariah Hammond, John Seeley, Samuel Shannon. This 
jury presented two indictments for assault and battery, and were 
thereupon discharged. 

General McClure makes of the early members of the bar 
the following notice. " I will mention as a very extraordin- 
ary circumstance, that although our new settlement consisted of 
emigrants from almost all nations, kindred and tongues, yet not 
a single gentleman of the legal profession made his appearance 
amongst us during the first two years. However, had they come, 
we had not much employment for them in their line of business, 
as all our litigations were settled by compromise, or by the old 
English law of battle, and all decisions were final. In our code 
there was no appellant jurisdiction. In the following year we had 
a full supply, shortly after the organization of Steuben County. 

The first arrival was George D. Cooper, of Rhinebeck, on the 
North River. He was appointed the first Clerk of the County. 
The next arrivals were Messrs. Jones, Masterton and Stuart, from 
New York. Next William Howe Cuyler, from Albany. Mr. 
Cuyler was a fine portly elegant young man of very fashionable 
and fascinating manners, of the Chesterfield order. In 1812, Gen- 
eral Amos Hall appointed him aid-de camp, and while stationed 
at Black Rock he was killed by a cannon ball from Fort Erie. 



n6 

Major Cuyler was a very active intelligent officer, and his death 
was much lamented. He left a young wife and one son. 

Next in order came Dominick Theophilus Blake, one of the sons 
of Erin-go-bragh. He was a well educated young man, but his 
dialect and manner of speech afforded much amusement for the 
other members of the bar. He had but little practice and did not 
remain long with us, but where he went and what became of him, 
I never have heard. 

Samuel S. Haight, Esq., moved from Newtown with his family 
to Bath. Gen. Haight had an extensive practice, and a numerous 
and interesting family of sons and daughters. He is yet living, 
and resides in the county of Allegany. Daniel Cruger, William B. 
Rochester, William Woods, Henry Wells and Henry W. Rogers, 
members of the Steuben County Bar, studied law in Mr. Haight's 
office. Edward Howell, Esq., of Bath, studied law in Gen. Cru- 
ger's office. 

Gen. Vincent Matthews resided for many years in Bath. He 
was said to be at the head of the bar for legal knowledge, but 
was not much of an advocate. Judge Edwards, Schuyler Strong, 
Jonas Clark, Jonathan Haight, John Cook and Leland and Mc- 
Master, are all that I can remember of the old stock. Ah, yes ! 
there's one more of my old friends — Cuthbert Harrison, a Vir- 
ginian, a young man of good sense, and whether drunk or sober, 
he was a good natured clever fellow." 

Mr. Cuthbert Harrison is described as a young man of fine 
talents and one of the most eloquent advocates in the western part 
of the State. 

Gen. Daniel Cruger, for a long time a leading member of the 
bat and an influential politician, was a printer by trade. He 
worked in the office of the old Bath Gazette, before the year 1800. 
Afterwards he published a newspaper in Owego. Adopting the 
legal profession, he practised with success at Bath. In 18 12, he 
was elected a member of the Legislature, and chosen Speaker of 
the House. After this he was chosen representative in the same 
body for three successive years. In 18 13 he served with credit as 
Major of Infantry, under Gen. McClure, on the frontiers. In 
1816, he was elected Member of Congress. In 1823, or about that 
time, he was again sent to the Legislature. He afterwards re- 
moved to Syracuse, returned to Bath, and in 1833, removed to 



ii 7 

Virginia, where he continued in the practice of law until his 
death, in 1843. Gen. Cruger, under the judicial system of New 
York, was once Assistant Attorney General, or District Attorney, 
of the district composed of the counties of Allegany, Steuben, 
Tioga, Broome and others. After the abolition of this system, 
he was District Attorney of the county of Steuben. 

Of the early Physicians of the county, we have not much to 
to say. Dr. Stockton, of New Jersey, and Dr. Schultz, a German, 
came in with Capt. Williamson, and were the most prominent 
of the pioneer physicians. The surgeon, in ancient times, lived a 
rough life. His ride was through forests without roads, across 
rivers without bridges, over hills without habitations. Bears rose 
up before his startled steed as he rode at dusk through the beechen 
groves of the upland, and wolves, made visible by the lightning, 
hung around him as he grouped through the hemlocks in the 
midnight storm, and insanely lusted for the contents of his saddle- 
bags. 



CHAPTER VII. 

SKETCHES OF THE SETTLEMENT OF THE VARIOUS DISTRICTS. 
PLEASANT VALLEY — (TOWN OF URBANA.) 

The settlement in that well known prolongation of the bed of 
Crooked L,ake, famed as Pleasant Valley, was the first made under 
the auspices of Captain Williamson, and was for many years the 
most prosperous and one of the most important in the country. 
The soil was exceedingly productive, and yielded not only an 
abundance for the settlers, but furnished much of the food by 
which the inhabitants of the hungry Pine Plains were saved from 
starvation. For the young settlers in various parts of the county, 
the employment afforded by the bountiful fields of the valley 
during haying and harvest, was for many years an important 
assistance. In the midst of pitiless hills and forests that clung 
to their treasures like misers, Pleasant Valley was generous and 
free-handed— yielding fruit, grain and grass with marvellous pro- 
digality. 

The first settlers of Pleasant Valley were William Aulls and 
Samuel Baker. Mr. Aulls, previous to the year 1793, was living 
in the Southern part of Pennsylvania. In the spring of 1793, he 
made the first clearing and built the first house in the valley. In 
the antumn of the same year he brought up his family. The 
house which he built stood on the farm now occupied by John 
Powers, Esq. 

Samuel Baker was a native of Bradford County, in Connecticut. 
When 15 years of age, he was taken prisoner by a party of Bur- 
goyne's Indians, and remained with the British army in captivity 
till relieved by the Surrender at Saratoga. After this event he 
enlisted in Col. Willett's corps, and was engaged in the pursuit 
and skirmish at Canada Creek, in which Captain William Butler, 
(a brother of the noted Col. John Butler), a troublesome leader of 
the Tories in the border wars of this State, was shot and toma- 
hawked by the Oneidas. In the spring of 1787, he went alone 
into the West, passed up the Tioga, and built a cabin on the open 



119 

flat between the Tioga and Cowenisque, at their junction. He 
was the first settler in the valley of the Tioga. Harris, the trader, 
was at the Painted Post, and his next neighbor was Col. Handy, 
on the Chemung, below Big Flats. Of beasts, he had but a cow, 
of "plunder," the few trifling articles that would suffice for an 
Arab or an Arapaho ; but like a true son of Connecticut, he 
readily managed to live through the summer, planted with a hoe a 
patch of corn on the flats, and raised a good crop. Before autumn 
he was joined by Captain Amos Stone, a kind of Hungarian exile. 
Captain Stone had been out in " Shay's War," and dreading the 
vengeance of the government, he sought an asylum under the 
southern shadow of Steuben County, where the wilderness was 
two hundred miles deep, and where the Marshal would not care 
to venture, even when backed by the great seal of the Republic. 
On Christmas day of 1786, Mr. Baker leaving Captain Stone in his 
cabin, went down the Tioga on the ice to Newtown as previously 
mentioned,* and thence to Hudson, where his family was living. 
At the opening of the rivers in the spring, he took his family 
down the Susquehanna to Tioga Point in a canoe. A great freshet 
prevented him from moving up the Chemung for many days, and 
leaving his family, he struck across the hills to see how his friend 
Captain Stone fared. On reaching the bank of the river opposite 
his cabin, not a human being was seen, except an Indian pound- 
ing corn in a Samp-mortar. Mr. Baker supposed that his friend 
had been murdered by the savages, and he lay in the bushes an 
hour or two to watch the movements of the red miller, who 
proved, after all, to be only a very good-natured sort of a Man- 
Friday, for at length the Captain came along driving the cow by 
the bank of the river. Mr. Baker hailed him, and he sprang into 
the air with delight. Captain Stone had passed the winter with- 
out seeing a white man. His Man-Friday stopped thumping at the 
Samp-morter, and the party had a very agreeable re-union. 

Mr. Baker brought his family up from Tioga Point, and lived 
here six years. During that time the pioneer advance had pene- 
trated the region of which the lower Tioga Valley is a member. 
A few settlers had established themselves on the vallej'- below 
them, and around the Painted Post were gathered a few cabins 
where now are the termini of railroads — the gate of a coal and 

*Chapter 2 . 



120 

lumber trade, bridges, mills and machinery. Elsewhere all was 
wilderness. The region, however, had been partially explored 
by surveyors and hunters. B-enjamin Patterson, while employed* 
as hunter for a party of surveyors, discovered the deep and beau- 
tiful valley which extends from the Crooked Lake to the Conhoc- 
ton. Seen from the brink of the uplands, there is hardly a more 
picturesque landscape in the county, or one which partakes more 
strongly of the character of mountain scenery. The abrupt 
wooded wall on either side, the ravines occasionally opening the 
flank of the hills, the curving valley that slopes to the lake on one 
hand, and meets the blue Conhocton range on the other, form at 
this day a pleasing picture. But to the hunter, leaning on his 
rifle above the sudden declivity — before the country had been dis- 
figured with a patchwork of farms and forest — the bed of the 
valley was like a river of trees, and the gulf, from which now rise 
the deadly vapor of a steam sawmill, seemed like a creek to pour 
its tributary timber into the broader gorge below.* 

In his wanderings the hunter occasionally stopped at the cabins 
of Tioga, and brought report of this fine valley. Mr. Baker did 
not hold a satisfactory title to his Pennsylvania farm, and was 
inclined to emigrate. Capt. Williamson visited his house in 1792, 
(probably while exploring the Lycoming Road,) and promised 
him a farm of any shape or size, (land in New York, previous to 
this, could only be bought by the township,) wherever he should 
locate it. Mr. Baker accordinghr selected a farm of some three 
hundred acresj in Pleasant Valley — built a house upon it in the 
autumn of 1793, and in the following spring removed his family 
from the Tioga. He resided here till his death in 1842, at the age 
of 80. He was several years Associate and First Judge of the 
County Court. Judge Baker was a man of a strong practical 
mind, and of correct and sagacious observations. 

Before 1795, the whole valley was occupied. Beginning with 
Judge Baker's farm, the next farm towards the lake was occupied 
by Capt. Amos Stone, the next by William Aulls, the next by 
Ephraim Aulls, the next by James Shether. Crossing the val- 
ley, the first farm (where now is the village of Hammondsport,) 

*This view, and the prospects from the South Hill of Bath, and the sum- 
mit of the Turnpike between Howard Flats and Hornellsville, are among 
the finest in the county. 



121 

was occupied by Capt. John Shether, the next by Eli Read, the 
next by William Barney, the next by Richard Daniels. Nearly 
all of these had been soldiers of the revolution. Capt. Shether 
had been an active officer, and was engaged in several battles. 
Of him, Gen. McClure says: — "He was Captain of Dragoons, 
and had the reputation of being an excellent officer and a favor- 
ite of Gen. Washington. He lived on his farm at the head of 
Crooked Lake in good style, and fared sumptuously. He was a 
generous, hospitable man, and a true patriot." The Shethers 
were from Connecticut. 

Judge William Read was a Rhode Island Quaker. He settled 
a few years after the revolution on the "Squatter lands" above 
Owego, and, being ejected, moved westward with his household 
after the manner of the times. Indians pushed the family up the 
river in canoes, while the men drove the cattle along the trail on 
the bank. Judge Read was a man of clear head and strong sense, 
of orderly and accurate business talent, and was much relied 
upon by his neighbors to make crooked matters straight. 

The Cold Spring Valley was occupied by Gen. McClure in 
1802, or about that time. He erected mills, and kept them in 
activity till 1814, when Mr. Henry A. Townsend entered into 
possession of the valley, and resided in the well known Cold 
Spring House till his death in 1839. Mr. Townsend removed 
from Orange County, in this State, to Bath in 1796. He was 
County Clerk from 1799 to 18 14 — the longest tenure in the cata- 
logue of county officers. 

Mr. Lazarus Hammond removed from Dansville to Cold Spring 
in 1810, or about that time, and afterwards resided near Crooked 
Lake till his death. He was Sheriff of the county in 18 14, and, 
at a recent period, Associate Judge of the County Court. 

FREDERICKTON. 

At the organization of the county, all that territory which now 
forms the towns of Tyrone, Wayne, Reading, in Steuben County, 
and the towns of Barrington and Starkey, in Yates, was erected 
into the town of Frederickton. The name was given in honor of 
Frederick Bartles, a German, who emigrated with his family 
from New Jersey in 1793, or about that time, and located himself 
at the outlet of Mud Lake, at the place known far and wide in 



122 

early days as Bartles 1 Hollow. He erected under the patronage 
of Captain Williamson a flouring and saw mill.* General Mc- 
Clure says of him, "Mr. Bartles was appointed a Justice of the 
Peace. He was an intelligent, generous and hospitable man. 
His mill-pond was very large, covering about one thousand acres 
of laud, and was filled with fish, such as pike, suckers, perch and 
eels, which afforded a great deal of sport for the Bath gentlemen 
in the fishing season. Such parties* of pleasure were entertained 
by Squire Bartles, "free of costs or charges, and in the best style. 

We fared sumptuously, and enjoyed the company of the old 
gentleman. He possessed an inexhaustible fund of pleasant and 
interesting anecdote. His dialect was a mixture of Dutch and 
English, and was very amusing." 

Bartles' Hollow, in the days of Captain Williamson, was 
thought a spot of great importance. Mud Creek was then a 
navigable stream, and it was thought that the commerce of Mud 
Lake and its outlet would require a town of considerable magni- 
tude at the point where Squire Bartles had established himself. 
In the speculating summer of 1796 the proprietor was offered 
enormous prices for his hollow, but he declined to part with it. 
In 1768 Mr. Bartles rafted one hundred thousand feet of boards 
from his mills to Baltimore. In 1800 he ran two arks from the 
same place, of which adventure the following minute was entered 
by the County Clerk, in Vol. I, of Records of Deeds : — 

"Steuben Coxinty. — This fourth day of April, one thousand 
eight hundred, started from the mills of Frederick Bartles, on the 
outlet of Mud Lake, (Frederickstown,) two arks of the following 
dimensions : — One built by Col. Charles Williamson, of Bath, 72 
feet long and 15 feet wide : the other built by Nathan Harvey, 71 
feet long and 15 feet wide, were conducted down the Conhocton, 
( after coming through Mud Creek without any accident,) to 
Paineed Post for Baltimore. Those arks are the first built in this 
county, except one built on the Conhocton at White's saw mill, 
five miles below Bath, by a Mr. Patterson, Sweeny and others, 

* Benjamin Patterson was employed by Captain W. to supply the workmen 
with wild meat while the mill was building. He was paid two dollars a day, 
and allowed the skins of the animals killed. He killed at this time on 
"Green Hill" nearly an hundred deer and several bears in three months, aud 
his companion, a hunter named Brocher, destroyed nearly as many. 



123 

from Penna., 70 feet long and 16 wide, was finished and started 
about the 20th of March the same year. 

This minute is entered to show at a future day the first com- 
mencement of embarkation in this (as is hoped) useful invention. 

By Henry A. Townsend, 

Clerk of Steuben Co." 

The success of Squire Bartles' arks produced as great a sensa- 
tion in the county as the triumph of the " Collins steamships" 
has created in our day ; but craft of this species have long been 
abandoned by our lumbermen. Mud Creek has failed since the 
clearing of the forests, and the produce of the Mud Lake country 
seeks the eastern market by canals and railroads. 

Among the early residents in the town of Bradford were Henry 
Switzer, Samuel S. Camp, Abram Rosenbury, Henry Switzer, 
senior, Thomas Rolls, Michael Scott, Daniel Bartholomew and 
Captain John N. Hight. 

General William Kernan, of County Kavan, in Ireland, was the 
first settler in that part of the old town of Fredericktown, which 
is now the town of Tyrone. He settled in 1800 upon a lot in a 
tract of 4000 acres, which had been purchased of Low & Harri- 
son, by Mr. Thomas O'Connor of the County of Roscommon in 
Ireland. Mr. O'Connor proposed to settle a colony of his coun- 
trymen on this tract. He himself lived for a time in a log-house 
on the hill by Little Lake, above the farm now occupied by Gen. 
Kernan. Two children, a son and daughter, accompanied him 
in his sojourn in the woods. The former is now Charles O'Con- 
nor, Esq., the eminent lawyer of New York city. A large num- 
ber of Irish Emigrants settled on the O'Connor tract, but after a 
few seasons abandoned their improvements — being discouraged 
at the labor of clearing the land, and discontented at the want of 
religious advantages according to the practice of the Roman 
Catholic Church. Gen. Kernan alone remained on the tract. 

Other early settlers of the town of Tyrone were Benjamin 
Sackett, Abram Fleet, sen., Gersham Bennett, Thaddeus Bennett, 
Abram Bennett, Jonathan Townsend, Capt. John Sebring. 

Elder Ephraim Sanford, Josiah Bennett, Solomon Wixon, 
Josiah Bennett, Joshua Smith, John Teeples, Simeon Sackett, 
John Sackett, sen., and John Woodard, were among the early 
settlers of the town of Wayne, in 1800 or 1803. It seems, how- 



124 

ever, that this township was settled several years before. Judge 
Dow, of Reading, says, " I think it was in the fall of 1791, I went 
to view land in township No. 5, second range, (now Wayne). 
At that time two families only were there, Henry Mapes and 
Zebulon Huff. I went to the same place again in 1794, and 
learned that Solomon Wixon, with a large family, two of the 
name of Silsbee, two or three Sandfords and others had settled 
there. ' ' 

Judge Dow settled near the present village of Reading Centre, in 
1798. David Culver followed him in 1800. Other early settlers of the 
towns of Reading and Starkey who came from 1800 to 1804, or 
about that time, were William Eddy, Abner Hurd, Timothy 
Hurd, Simeon Royce, Matthew Royce, Reuben Henderson, 
Andrew Booth, Samuel Gustin, John Bruce, and Samuel Shoe- 
maker. Among others who settled about the year 1806, were 
John and James Roberts, Daniel Shannon, Caleb Fulkerson, 
Richard Lanning, George Plumer, and Andrew McDowell. 

Judge Dow having been consulted by the writer of this sketch 
with regard to a supposed inaccuracy in the outline of Seneca 
Lake on an old map, gave him a few notes of the settlement of 
the country, which are as follows : 

' ' I left Connecticut and came to the head of Seneca Lake in 
April, 1789. and stayed there, and at the Friends' Settlement 
until late in the fall, then after being away a few months, returned 
to the head of the Seneca Lake in March, 1790, and continued to 
reside there and at the place where I now reside until the present 
time. The Friends (Jemima Wilkinson's followers) made their 
settlement in 1788 and 1789, but between them and the head of 
the lake, a distance of 20 miles, it was not settled till the time 
above mentioned (1798). 

' ' The map represents the Seneca Lake as extending south to 
Catharine's Town. This is not correct. There were Indian 
clearings at the Head and at Catharine (as the two places were 
familiarly called) when white people came there in 1789. There 
was a marsh but a little higher than the level of the lake extend- 
ing from the beach of the lake, up south, nearly to Catharines, 
and quite across the valley, excepting a tract of tillable land lying 
between the northern part of said marsh and the west hill, and 
extending south from the beach about one-half or three-fourths 



125 

of a mile to a part of said marsh. This land was called the Flat 
at the Head on which David Culver and myself resided. This 
flat was the true locality of the Culverstouoi of the map and the 
village of Culver s of the book, anything to the contrary notwith- 
standing. 

" The rains and the melting of the snow raised the lake some 
every spring about that time, (1790), and the greatest part of the 
marsh was covered with water. A stranger might possibly mark 
down the marsh for part of the lake. 

" I saw Caleb Gardner in 1789, who said he lived at Big Flatts, 
and understood from him that others had settled there. In the 
spring of 1790 I saw Col. Erwin at Chemung, who with one or 
two men was driving some cattle to his son's at Painted Post. 
The lands along each side of Catharine Valley were not settled, I 
think, till 1798 or 1799. People then came and settled, three, 
four, and five miles southeast of Catharine's. This place was 
called Johnson's Settlement. On the lands west of the valley 
settlements were made probably about the same time or soon 
after. 

" When I first came to Newtown Point as it was then called 
(now Elmira) there were but few houses in that place. There 
were six or seven on the road and at Horse-heads. Further on 
were two houses, but at that time I think they were not occupied. 
There was one house within about a mile of Catharine ; there 
were two or three in Catharine, and two or three on the flat at the 
head of Seneca Lake. I am pretty sure these were all the houses 
that had been built at that time (April 1789) at Newtown, at the 
head of the lake and between the two places." 

PRATTSBURGH. 

[Most of the facts contained in the following sketch of the settlement of 
the town of Prattsburg, are derived from a manuscript history of that town 
prepared by Samuel Hotchkin, Esq., of Fredonia, (late of the village of 
Prattsburgh, ) and politely furnished by that gentleman to the Editor. The 
manuscript is in the form of a Report made by the direction of the Pratts- 
burgh Lyceum. It is to be regretted that the limits of this volume do not 
permit more liberal extracts from Mr. Hotchkin' s interesting chronicle.] 

The pioneer of Prattsburgh was Captain Joel Pratt. There 
were actual residents within the boundaries of that town before 



126 

Captain Pratt, but its settlement and sale were conducted by him ; 
by his care it was peopled by citizens who at an early day were 
reputed by all the county, men of good conscience and steady 
habits ; and by his sound sense, and his discretion in conducting 
the settlement of the town, he gained an influence and enjoyed a 
public confidence at home, which entitle him to be styled the 
Founder of Prattsburgh. 

The first purchase of Township Number Six, in the third range, 
was made in the year 1797, or about that time, by a surveyor 
named Preston, from Westerlo, in Albany County. Judge Kersey 
was admitted to an interest in the purchase by Preston, but a dif- 
ficulty arose between the two which it is unnecessary to detail and 
the claims of both were ultimately relinquished. The township 
was first known as Kerseytown. 

In 1799, or about that time, Capt. Pratt came into Steuben 
County. He had previously resided in Spencertown, Columbia 
Count)'', and was induced by the promised importance of the 
Steuben region, under the Williamson administration, to make a 
purchase among the discouraging mountains of the Five-mile 
Creek country in preference to settling himself upon lands in the 
neighborhood of Geneva or Canandaigua, which were then held at 
a lower price than the hemlock hills of Wheeler. Captain Pratt's 
first purchase was of several thousand acres in Township No. 5, 
Range 3, being in the present town of Wheeler. Captain Pratt 
entered the forest with a gang of men, cleared one hundred and 
ten acres, and sowed it with wheat. On his return to the East, 
the rough life of the Steuben woods had so reduced and blackened 
the fair and portly farmer of Columbia County, that he was not 
recognized by his family. The following winter Captain Pratt 
removed his family into the wilderness. In 1802, being not 
altogether satisfied with his purchase, he was permitted to ex- 
change it for the township above. 

William Root, of Albany County, joined with him in the con- 
tract for the purchase of Township No. 6, by the terms of which 
contract, Messrs. Pratt and Root charged themselves with the 
survey, sale and settlement of the Township, two hundred acres 
being reserved for the support of a resident clergyman. They 
were to sell no land at a lower price than $2.50 per acre, and were 



127 

to receive one-half of all monies paid for land, at a rate exceeding 
$2.00 per acre, after they had paid the suni of $30,000 into the 
Pulteney Land Office. The connection of Messrs. Pratt & Root 
was terminated in 1806. 

" Mr. Pratt had determined to form a church as well as a town. 
It appears to have been his intention to have cast his lot with the 
hardy pioneers of the forest, while Mr. Root, who continued to 
reside at Albany, seemed to regard the whole enterprise in no 

other light than as a hopeful speculation." 

' ' Captain Pratt was a member of a Congregational Church in the 
village of Spencertown. It was his determination to settle him- 
self and family in this Township, and establish a religious society 
in the order to which he had been accustomed. With a view to 
the accomplishment of this object, he required every person to 
whom he sold land, to give a note to the amount of fifteen dollars 
on each hundred acres of land purchased by him, payable within 
a given time, with the legal interest annually, till paid to the 
Trustees of the Religious Society which should be formed. 

' ' The first permanent settler within this township was Mr. 
Jared Pratt, a nephew of Capt. Pratt, who came here to reside in 
the spring of 1801. Mr. Pratt had just set out in his career of 
life, and brought with him a wife to cheer and sweeten the depri- 
vations incident to a pioneer's life. The farm which he selected, 
and which he continued to occupy as long as he lived, is the 
same as is now owned by Mr. John Van Housen, and there a row 
of Lombardy poplars at this day marks the place of the first shelter 
built for civilized man within this township. Concerning this 
family, Rev. Mr. Hotchkin, in his history of the Presbyterian 
Church in Western New York, takes the following notice : — ' They 
constituted the only family in the township for about two years 
and a half. Their hardships were many, and their privations 
great. No neighbor within several miles, no roads except a mere 
trail and a dense forest all around them. To obtain flour for their 
bread, Mr. Pratt would yoke his oxen, fill his bag with grain, lay 
it across the yoke of his oxen, and drive his team eleven miles to 
Naples, where was the nearest mill to his habitation, the road all 
the way lying in a dense forest without any habitation contiguous 
to it.' Mr. Pratt continued to reside here till 1840, when, by a 



128 

fall, he broke his neck, and died instantly in the 63d year of his 
age. Throughout his long life, he was respected and beloved, 
and in his death it may with perfect truthfulness be said, ' Tho' 
many die as sudden, few as well." 

" The next settler, if settler he might be called, was Daniel 
Buell. He built him a rude shanty on what is now an orchard, 
and attached to Mr. Isaac Ainsworth farm. Buell was a jolly 
and most eccentric bachelor. His usual and almost constant 
employment was hunting. He resided here but a few years, when 
he sought a deeper solitude, and soon afterwards was murdered by 
a party of Indians in Ohio." — (MS. Hist- of Pratt sburgh.~) 

Rev. John Niles, a licentiate of a Congregational Association, 
settled, in 1S03, with his family on a lot of eighty acres, being 
part of the farm occupied by the late Mr. Josiah Allis, upon the 
east side of the present Bath road, which was given to him by 
Capt. Pratt as an inducement to settle upon his township. " The 
Sabbath after Mr. Niles' arrival he held divine service in Jared 
Pratt's house, and from that day to the present, these people have 
never been without these sacred ministrations. About this time, 
the sons of Capt. Pratt, in advance of their parents, settled upon 
the farm which has ever since been held by some one or more of 
his immediate descendants. 

" Next in order of settlers, and in the winter of 1804, came the 
families of William P. Curtis, Samuel Tuthill, and Pomroy Hull. 
At this time, the only road leading to town was the Two Rod 
Road, (from Bath towards Naples). Solsbury Burton came like- 
wise in 1804, and occupied what used to be well known as the 
Burton farm. About this time came Capt. Pratt himself, with 
the remainder of his family from the East Hill, in Wheeler, and 
where he had resided for two or three years previous. 

" In the year 1806, we find a goodly array of settlers. In ad- 
dition to those we have named, are the following : — Enoch Niles, 
Rufus Blodget, Isaac Waldo, Judge Hopkins, John Hopkins, 
Dea. Ebenezer Rice, Robert Porter, Dea. Gamaliel Loomis, Sam- 
uel Hayes, Dea. Abial Lindley, Moses Lyon, Uriel Chapin, 
Asher Bull. Bohan Hills, Stephen Prentiss, and perhaps others. 

"Whoever, at the present day, will walk through our grave- 
yard, to read there the records of the past generation, will find 



129 

most of these names upon those rude headstones, now defaced 
and nearly obliterated by the hand of time, for most of them 
have long since gone down to the silent resting place of the dead. 
The inscriptions there recorded are homely, but they are trnth- 
ful."— (MS. Hist.) 

The first extensive clearing in Prattsburgh was one of seventy 
acres, including the Public Square of the Village, made in 1803, 
under the direction of Captain Pratt. The first framed building 
was a barn built by Joel Pratt, Jr., in 1804, " and that identical 
building yet stands by Bishop Smith's orchard, and upon his lot. 
This building was during the first few years of our annals a sort 
of " Hotel Dieu." Families there rested until they could arrange 
the rude appointment of their own homes, sometimes in numbers 
of half a dozen at once. And till the erection of the first meet- 
ing-house, it was the usual place of holding public worship 

The first merchants of our town were Joel Pratt, Jr., and Ira 
Pratt, two sons of Captain Pratt. The first hotel-keeper was 
Aaron Bull. His house, which was but a log one, was probably 
opened in 1806 or 1807,' and adjoined Dr. Pratt's office. The 

buildings of Dr. Hayes now cover the same ground The 

same burying ground we at present use for interment, was set 
apart for this purpose in 1806. The first contribution to this 
now immense multitude, was Harvey Pratt, a young man of 22 
years, and son of Capt. Joel Pratt. ' ' (MS. Hist ) 

The Congregational church was organized in 1804, and at that 
time consisted of eleven members. The first church edifice was 
erected in 1807, and was a framed building standing near the 
southeast corner of the public square. The worshippers it seems 
were at first inclined to build it of logs, greatly to the displeasure 
of Capt. Pratt, who "retorted upon the society the anathema 
pronounced against those who dwelt in ceiled houses while the 
temple of the Lord laid waste." Rev. John Niles and Rev. 
James H. Hotchkin were the earty ministers of this society. 

The West Hill settlement was commenced in 1805, by Stephen 
Prentiss, Warham Parsons, and Aaron Cook. The settlement of 
Riker's Hollow was commenced in 1807, by Michael Keith, who 
was joined in 1810, by Thomas Riker, John Riker, and William 
Drake. 

" Captain Pratt, who figures so conspicuously in our early 



130 

history, and who was the founder of our town, and to a great ex- 
tent the fashioner of its polity, continued to reside among this 
people till 1820, when he ended his mortal career. His last days 
were a sort of patriarchal retirement, and to this day his memory 
is cherished by all who knew him." — (MS. Hist.) 

Judge Porter died in 1847. He was for many years one of the 
most prominent citizens of the town, and was a man of liberal 
education, of much literary taste, and an efficient and conscien- 
tious magistrate. The annalist of the town says, " He probably 
filled more offices of trust among this people than any other man 
of his day. Our early town records show that all the most re- 
sponsible offices within our bounds have from time to time been 
filled by him." 

Rev. Jas. H. Hotchkin, a venerable and widely known citizen 
of Prattsburgh , (author of The History of the Presbyterian Church 
in Western New York, heretofore alluded to,) died September 2d, 
1 85 1. He was the son of Beriah Hotchkin, a pioneer mission- 
ary. He graduated at Williams College, 1800 ; studied theology 
with Dr. Porter, of Cattskill, removed to Prattsburgh in 1809, 
and there labored twenty -one years. The Genesee Evangelist 
says of him " He had a mind of a strong masculine order, well 
disciplined by various reading, and stored with general knowl- 
edge. The doctrinal views of the good old orthodox New Eng- 
land stamp which he imbibed at first, he maintained strenuously 
to the last, and left a distinct impression of them wherever he had 
an opportunity to inculcate them. His labors through the half 
century were ' abundant ' and indefatigable. He had the happi- 
ness of closing his life in the scenes of his greatest usefulness." 

WHEELER- 

The first permanent settler in this town was Capt Silas Wheel- 
er, a native of Rhode Island, who emigrated from Albany Coun- 
ty, in the State of New York, in the year 1790 or 1800. Capt. 
Joel Pratt made a purchase of several thousand acres in this town, 
in the year previous, and had made a clearing of one hundred 
and ten acres, and raised a crop of wheat from it, on what is now 
known as the " Mitchell farm." Capt. Pratt was permitted, by 



i3i 

Capt. Williamson, to exchange this for a tract in the town of 
Prattsburgh, where he removed in 1804, or about that time. 

Capt. Wheeler had been a man of adventure. He was one of 
Benedict Arnold's men in the perilous march through the forests 
of Maine, and at the assault of Quebec stood near Montgomery 
when he fell. He was four times taken prisoner in the revol- 
utionary war — twice on land, and twice when roving the high 
seas as privateer's man. From his first captivity, he was soon 
released by exchange. After another capture, he lay in prison 
more than a year. Being taken a second time on one of the dar- 
ing privateers that tormented the British coast, he was confined 
in the Jail of Kinsale, in Ireland, and condemned to be hung as a 
pirate — or at least was very rudely treated, and threatened with 
hanging by powers that had the authority to make good their 
threats. He escaped this disagreeable fate by the assistance of a 
friendly Irishman, and of the distinguished orator and statesman 
Henry Grattan. Mr. Grattan procured for him a passport, pro- 
tected him from press-gangs and the police, and secured for him 
a passage to Dunkirk, in France. 

Capt. Wheeler was induced to settle in Steuben County by 
Preston, the Surveyor, (mentioned in the sketch of the settle- 
ment of Prattsburgh,) who, on his return to Westerlo, spread 
the most glowing accounts of the fertility and prospects of the 
Conhocton Country. Capt. Wheeler's settlement was made at 
the place now occupied by his grand-son, Mr. Grattan H. 
Wheeler. 

Capt. Wheeler's first trip to mill, is worthy of record. There 
were, at the time when he had occasion to "go to mill," three 
institutions in the neighborhood where grinding was done — at 
the Friend's settlement, at Bath, and at Naples. The mill-stones 
of Bath had suspended operations — there being nothing there to 
grind, as was reported. Capt. Wheeler made a cart, of which 
the wheels were sawn from the end of a log of curly-maple ; the 
box was of corresponding architecture. He started for Naples 
with two oxen attached to this vehicle. Two young men went 
before the oxen with axes and chopped a road, and the clumsy 
chariot came floundering through the bushes behind — bouncing 
over the logs, and snubbing the stumps, like a ship working 



132 

through an ice-field. The first day they reached a point a little 
beyond the present village of Prattsburgh — a distance of six miles 
from their starting point — and on the second, moored triumphant- 
ly at the mill of Naples. 

Capt. Wheeler was a man famous for anecdotes throughout all 
the land. Not one of the multitude of Captains, who flourished 
in our country in early days, earned his military title more fairly . 
He died in 1828, aged 78. Hon. Grattan H. Wheeler, son of 
Capt. Wheeler, died in 1852. He had been a prominent citizen 
of the county many years, and had served in the State and 
National Legislature. 

After Capt. Wheeler's settlement, lots were purchased, and im- 
provements made by persons residing abroad, some of whom 
afterwards established themselves on these farms. Thomas Aulls, 
Esq., a son of William Aulls, the first settler of Pleasant Valley, 
and Col. Barney, of the same neighborhood, with Phillip Murtle, 
who lived on the farm now owned by Gen. Otto F. Marshall, 
were among the earliest settlers after the Wheelers. These, with 
settlers named Bear, Ferral, and Rifle, were mentioned by our 
informant as constituting all, or nearly all, of the original stock 
of settlers. Esq. Gray came in at an early time. The Gulf Road 
to Bath was opened by Capt. Wheeler ; the Kennedyville Road 
was opened a year or two afterwards. The first saw-mill in the 
town stood at the Narrows of the Five Mile Creek, and was built 
by Capt. Wheeler. 

PULTENEY. 

The first settlement in the town of Pulteney, was made on 
Bully Hill, by John Van Camp and D. Thompson, in 1797. 
The following are the names of other early settlers from 1799 to 
1807 : — Samuel Miller, G. F. Fitz Simmons, Thomas Hoyt, 
Abraham Bennet, Ephraim Eggleston, John Kent, Joseph Hall, 
senior, Samuel Wallis, John Turner, John Ellis, Augustus Tyler, 
and Ezra Pelton. John Gulick kept the first dry goods store in 
the town.* 

HOWARD. 

Abraham Johnston settled in 1806 where Richard Towle now 
lives, and about the same time, Samuel Baker settled where J. 

*Comniunicated by Melchior Wagener, Esq. 



133 

Rice now lives, and Reuben Smith, Abraham Smith and Abel 
Bullard, settled on the road between Goff's Mills and the old 
Turnpike, near the old State Road. Jacob, Benjamin and Daniel 
N. Bennett, settled in 1807, or about that time, on what is yet 
called Bennett's Flatts, Job. B. Rathbun, with three of his 
brothers, in the Rathbun settlement, in 1808 or 1809. William 
Allen and David Smith, in the Pond settlement in 1810 or '11, 
and Capt. Joel Rice and Esq. Israel Baldwin in 181 1 or '12. 
Major Thomas Bennett settled on the old turnpike about six 
miles east of Hornellsville, toward 1808. Colonel Henry Ken- 
nedy built a saw-mill at Goff's Mills in 1809. William Goff, 
Esq., came in in 1812. 

The town of Howard was set off from the old town of Canisteo 
in 18 1 2. The first town meeting was held at the house of Simeon 
Bacon, on the old turnpike, in the spring of 18 13. In the year 
1 812, there were about thirty families in the town.* 

HORNBY AND ORANGE-f 

Asia and Uriah Nash, the first settlers of Hornby, settled in 
1 8 14, in the north part of the town called Nash settlement. Ed- 
ward Stubbs, Ezra Shaw, Samuel Adams, and Jesse Underwood, 
settled in 1 8 15. In the same year, Jesse Piatt, John Babbins and 
Amasa Stanton, settled in the Piatt settlement, in the south- 
western part of the town. James S- Gardner, Chester Knowlton, 
and Adin Palmer settled in the Palmer settlement in 18 16. 

Darius Hunt, Chauncey Hunt, James Overhiser and Thomas 
Hurd, were the first settlers in Orange, on Mead's Creek, prob- 
ably in 1812. 

CONHOCTON.t 

Captain Williamson, about the time of the settlement of Bath, 
sent a man named Bivin, to the Twenty -two mile Tree, (now 
Blood's Corners,) to keep a tavern. This point was known in 
early times as Bivin's Corners. The first settlement made in the 
town of Conhocton after this, was made, according to the best of 
our information, in the Raymond Settlement, by James and 

*Communicated by William Goff, Esq. 
-(-Communicated by Henry Gardner, Esq. 
^Communicated by Mr. Levi Chamberlain. 



134 

Aruna Woodward. In 1806, Joseph Chamberlain, of Herkimer 
County, settled on the Davis farm, near Liberty Corners. His 
household consisted of a cow and a dog. All his property, be- 
sides his axe, was contained in a small pack. For his cow the 
accommodations were rather rude. When the hour of milking 
arrived, the settler resorted to the strange expedient of driving 
the beast ' ' a straddle of a log, ' ' and milking into a notch cut 
with his axe. Into this he crumbled his bread, and ate therefrom 
with a wooden spoon. 

In the following year, Levi Chamberlain, Captain Jones 
Cleland, Joseph Shattuck and Deacon Horace Fowler, settled in 
this neighborhood. Other early settlers were — Timothy Sher- 
man, James Barnard, Samuel Rhoades, Jesse Atwood, Isaac 
Morehouse, and Charles Burlingham. The Brownsons settled at 
Loon Lake at an early day. Abram Lint settled at Lint Hill, in 
in 1809, or about that time, and afterwards the Hatches, the 
Ketches, and others. 

Capt. Cleland built in 1808 the first mills. Levi Chamberlain 
built in 1809, the first frame house at Liberty Corners, and Jo- 
seph Shattuck kept the first tavern at the same place about the 
same time. 

On account of some legislative awkwardness, the settlers in the 
northern part of the town, went for several years to Bath, to vote 
at town meetings, while those in the southern part went to Dans- 
ville. The two squads of voters used to meet each other on the 
road when going to the polls. 

THE COUNTRY SOUTH OF CANISTEO. 

The following are names of settlers who were living in 18 10 in 
the town of Troupsburgh, which then comprised nearly all the 
territory in the county south of the Canisteo River, " Beginning 
on the east side, the settlers were Caleb Smith, Daniel Johnson, 
Lemuel Benham, Breakhill Patrick, Samuel B. Rice, Nathaniel 
Mallory, Elijah Johnson, Joseph Smith, Reazin Searle and Beth- 
uel Tubbs. Further west, on the old State Road, were Ebenezer 
Spencer, Andrew Simpson and a family of Marlatts, Elisha 
Hance, Philip Cady, Elijah Cady, Samuel Cady, Peter Cady, 
Caleb Colvin, Matthew Grinnolds, William Card, Charles Card ; 



135 

and west of the old State Road, were Nathan Coffin, Henry Gar- 
rison, Edmund Robinson, Jeremiah Nudd. The last three came 
in 1 812, Alanson Perry came in 18 10. There were some others 
here in an early day, as by the census of 181 5, there were over 
500 inhabitants."* Daniel Johnson was Supervisor till 181 2, 
and Charles Card from 1813 to 1819. Samuel B. Rice was Town 
Clerk for about twenty years. The first grist-mill was built by 
Caleb Smith, the second by George Martin in 181 2. " There 
was but little improvement made for several years, and many of 
the first settlers became discouraged and emigrated to the West, 
and the town seemed to be at a stand. Those remaining have be- 
come comfortable in circumstances." The Brotzman's, Andrew 
Boyd, the Rowleys and John Craig were early settlers of Jasper. 

ORANGE- f 

That part of the town of Orange called Mead's Creek was set- 
tled, or began to be settled, a few years previous to 1820. 
Among the inhabitants who were there previous to or about that 
time, were Jedediah Miller, Andrew Fort, David Kimball, Esq., 
and his brother Moses, John Dyer, Sylvester Goodrich, and three 
settlers named Hewitt. Joshua Chamberlain came there four or 
five years later and bought the land where the village of Mont- 
erey stands, of a man by the name of De Witt. 

' ' The northeast part of the town of Orange known by the 
appellation of Sugar Hill , did not receive its name from any dis- 
tinguished elevation or large hill, but from the following circum- 
stance. Some of the men and boys from the older settlements 
used to come to this place to make sugar in the spring of the 
year, while it was yet a wilderness. They had traversed the 
woods in quest of deer, and taken notice of the fine groves of 
maple in this locality, and as there were no settlers on the land, 
and nobody in their way, they had an excellent chance for mak- 
ing sugar ; and as they had to give the place some name, they 
called it Sugar Hill. The settlement began about the year 1819 
or 1820. Lewis Nichols, William Webb, Thomas Horton, 
Abraham Allen, John Allen, Ebenezer Beach, Mr. Eveleth, Sey- 

*Cornmunicated by Charles Card, Esq. 
-(-Communicated by Dr. Silas B. Hibbard, of Sugar Hill. 



136 

mour Lock wood, and two families of Comptons, were among the 
first settlers. Dr. Hibbard arrived in 1821, and Abraham Ly- 
bolt, Esq. , came about the same time. 

" After the commencement of the settlement the land was very 
soon taken up by actual settlers. The fertility of the soil, its 
proximity to the head of Seneca Lake, their anticipated place of 
market, the easy manner of obtaining the land from the Land 
Office at Bath, their confidence in the validity of the title, and 
perhaps the novelty of the name, might all have contributed to 
the speedy settlement of the place." 

CAMPBELL.* 
The first permanent settlers of that part of the old Town of 
Bath which is now the Town of Campbell, were Joseph Stevens, 
Robert Campbell, Solomon Campbell, and Archa Campbell. 
In addition to these, the remaining inhabitants of the Town in 
the year 1800, and about that time, were, Elias Williams, black- 
smith, Samuel Calkins, farmer, Abrarn Thomas and Isaac 
Thomas, hunters, James Pearsall, farmer, David McNutt, Joseph 
Woolcott, and Sailor. 

AVOCA. 

Avoca was known in the early part of Col. Williamson's time 
as "Buchanan's," or the Eight- Mile- Tree. The name of the 
first settler, as the title of the settlement indicates, was Buchanan. 
He was established at that point by the agent and kept " accom- 
modations ' ' for travellers. A correspondent has returned the 
names of the oldest residents as follows: James McWhorter, 
Abraham Towner, Gersham Towner, Daniel Tilton, John Don- 
nahee, Spence Moore, Henry Smith, Allen Smith, who have been 
residents for about thirty years, and John B. Calkins, Joseph 
Matthewson, Gersham Salmon, James Davis, and James Silsbee, 
who have been residents about twenty-four years. 

WAYLAND.f 

The first settlement in the town of Wayland was made by 

Zimmerman, in 1806, on the farm now occupied by J. Hess, at 

*Communicated by Mr. Samuel Cook, of Campbell. 
tCommunicated by Rev. E. Brownson. 



137 

the depot. The north part of the town was settled by Captain 
Bowles (1808), Mr. Hicks (about 1810), Thomas Begole (1814), 
Mr. Bowen (1808), and John Hume (1808). 

The settlements at Loon Lake in the south part of the town, 
were made in 18 13 by Salmon Brownson, James Brownson, 
Elisha Brownson, and Isaac Willie. 

The settlers of the central part of the town were^ Walter Patchin 
(18 14), Dr. Warren Patchin (181 5), Dennis Hess (18 15), Ben- 
jamin Perkins, and Samuel Draper. 

' ' No road passed through the town except the ancient one 
from Bath to Dansville. It was a hard town to settle, and people 
were generally poor. They passed through many hardships and 
privations, but now their town is in a prosperous condition. 

' ' One circumstance connected with the early settlement of this 
town may be somewhat interesting. In 18 15, there being a 
scarcity of bread, I went through the towns of Springwater, 
Livonia, and Sparta, and thence to Dansville, in search of grain 
for sale, and none was to be found in those towns, nor in West- 
ern New York. People had to hull green wheat and rye for food. 
I found a field of rye on William Perine's farm which was 
thought nearly fit to cut. I went home and got some neighbors, 
and with oxen and cart went and cut some of it, threshed it, and 
took it to the mill and had it mashed, for it was too damp to 
grind, and thought ourselves the happiest people in the world be- 
cause we had bread." 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE AIR CASTLE VANISHING — THE CLOSE OF COL. WILLIAMSON'S 
AGENCY — HIS CHARACTER. 

Nearly sixty years have passed away since the Scottish Captain 
started from the West Branch in pursuit of the air-castle which 
shone so bravely like a balloon to him, looking northward from the 
Cliffs of Northumberland. The changes which have in the mean 
time been wrought upon this continent, are without a parallel in 
the World's annals. Prophecy has been put to silence : conjec- 
ture has proved a fool ; for the things which have been accom- 
plished exceed so far anything promised in the visions of political 
prophets, or in the ravings of dreamers, that the extravagance of 
our ancient soothsayers is this day accounted moderation. No 
conquests of Goths, or Tartars can be compared for rapidity with 
that which has been achieved by the woodsmen of America in 
the overthrow of a forest as broad as an ocean. The little weapon 
which they wielded against the innumerable host that they went 
forth to conquer, seemed enchanted, like the swords of those 
champions of old, who are said to have slain their pagan enemies 
till rivers were choked, and hollows became hillocks. States 
have been founded, cities built, savage rivers made highways, 
prairies where the Genius of Barbarism fed his herds of elk and 
buffalo, made pastures for mules and bullocks, and the lakes 
which lay afar off in the solitudes, crossed only by the flocks of 
wild fowl and the fleets of Indian admirals, have been gladdened 
by the keels of steamships and the watchful flame of light-houses. 
The utmost western wilderness which the settler of " The Gen- 
esee ' ' beheld over the L,akes, and which he surmised might 
become the dwelling place of desperate pioneers when he had 
been a century in his grave, is now but midway between Niagara 
and the outposts of the Republic, and caravans of restless men, 
pressing beyond the momentary borders, have crossed the Cordil- 
leras and built cities on the coast of the Pacific. 

Where now is the gallant Scot and his city ? The Genesee 
country has not lagged in the advances of the Republic. Its popu- 



139 

lation is counted by hundred thousands, and its wealth is told by 
millions ; but the memory of the city builder and his schemes has 
almost perished. While the Northern counties have been making 
almost unexampled strides to power and opulence, the district 
which wise men of the last century pointed at as the centre of future 
Western commerce has dragged its slow length along in poverty 
and obscurity, and only by the sheerest labor has reached its 
present position of independence. The Great Western Highway 
was diverted from the valley of theConhoctou. For a quarter of 
a century the wealth of the North and West has been rolling in 
one tremendous torrent to the Mohawk and the Hudson, and by 
the side of the channel through which it poured, the demon, our 
ancient enemy aforementioned, has struck swamps and salt-bogs 
with his staff, and forthwith cities have risen from the mire. The 
little river which was to have been the drudge of the broad north- 
west, carrying to the seaboards rough arks ladened with the grains 
of Genesee and far-off Michigan, has been happily delivered from 
that tedious servitude, turning a few mill-wheels and watering 
meadows. The fair valley of Bath, instead of groaning under 
the weight of a wilderness of bricks where brokers and cashiers, 
and other mercantile monsters might go about, gratif}dng their 
financial instincts to the full, bears at this day only a quiet village 
and a few ranges of firms, and is girdled by wooded hillsides as 
wild as in the days when the great Captain of the Six Nations 
was wont to rest with his warriors under their shadows. 

The memory of the Scot and his city has almost perished. A 
Senator of the United States, addressing not long since the mem- 
bers of the Legislature of the State of New York, guests of the 
city of New York, at the Astor House, spoke of the prediction 
of a traveller in the year 1800, that the village of Bath on the 
Conhocton river, would in fifty years become the commercial 
metropolis of the State of New York.* The public heard it with 

*A portion of the speech of Hon. William H. Seward, at the Astor 
House, on the evening of March 22, 185 1, is thus reported in the New 
York Courier and Enquirer : 

•'Gentlemen: It seems to me that we can improve this festival occasion 

by considering how intimate is the relation between the City and the State, — 

how essential each is to the other There is a town in the interior of the 

State, far away in what was lately known as the secluded, sequestered part 

•of it, Bath by name. Many of the representatives of the Rural Districts 



140 

surprise. Many men of the past generation remembered the 
name of Williamson, but of the present generation few, except 
citizens of Western New York, knew of the attempted assassina- 
tion of the great Atlantic city. 

The story of the downfall of Backwoods Baron and his city, is 
a brief one. Ten years Col. Williamson lived on the Conhocton, 
and exhausted all chemistry in his experiments upon the possi- 
bility of turning a castle of rainbows into .stone. His expendi- 
tures had been enormous, and the British proprietors began to 
grumble audibl3 r . The towers of glass, which they once imagined 
they saw glimmering in the wilderness, were scrutinized with 
profound suspicion. But whatever doubt there might be about 
the reality of those structures, as to one thing there could be no 
doubt at all. The greedy wilderness was swallowing the fortunes 
of the Pulteneys with as little gratitude as an anaconda. Hun- 
dreds of thousands of pounds had been thrown away to that 
monster, and like the grave it was yet hungry. To satisfy such 
a remorseless appetite one needed a silver mine, or a credit with 
the goblins. 

know it well : the members from Steube n can speak for it. Of this town I 
wish to speak. It is a beautiful but quiet one, situated in the delightful val- 
ley and on the banks of the Conhocton, a tributary of the Susquehanna. 
But those who know it well have remarked, that it has a broad and magnifi- 
cent plan, imperfectly filled out. There are houses on corners, designating 
streets and avenues, without inhabitants. In short, it was laid out for a great 
city, but has long since renounced all ambitious pretensions. You do not 
know how this happened. Well if on your return to Albany, you will call 
on my excellent friend (Mr. Street,) the State Libarian, he will give you a 
small duodecimo volume, published in the year 1800, containing an account 
of a journey performed by an English gentleman in the short space of six 
weeks, from the city of New York all the way to Niagara Falls. That travel- 
ler visited Bath, then in the day-spring of its growth, and he recorded of it 
that it was destined to be the greatest commercial metropolis of the State of 
New York. — The Hudson was only a short arm of the sea. It did not pene- 
trate the interior far enough to take a hold of the trade of the country. Bath 
was to receive all of it that could be diverted from the channel of the St. 
Lawrence and the market of Quebec, and send it down through the Conhoc- 
ton and the Susquehanna to Chespeake Bay. Had that calculation been 
realized, Bath might have been a city like Albany, and New York would 
have been a city over which the President could have had but little ambition 
to preside." — (Cheers.) 



141 

Col. Williamson, however, was not discouraged. Time enough 
has not been given, he argued. Even a magician would not 
undertake to perform such a chemical exploit in ten years. The 
brilliant balloon which overhangs the wilderness is not yet 
securely anchored, it is true, and sways to and fro as if it might 
possibly rise into the air and .sail away. Give but a few years 
more and everything will be accomplished. 

But the faith and patience of the proprietors had become utterly 
exhausted. They had had enough of balloons and ballooning, 
and were deaf to argument. Like one awakening from enchant- 
ment, the Baronet saw the towers of ivory to be but squat pens of 
logs, and the spires of glass, but long dead trunks of hemlocks, 
bristling with spikes and blackened with fire. It was determined 
to change the system which had regulated the estate. Accord- 
ingly, in 1802, Col. Williamson descended from the throne, and 
Robert Troup, Esq., of the city of New York reigned in his 
stead.* 



*Col. Williamson held the Pulteney Estates in New York in his own name, 
and conveyed them to Sir William Pulteney in the month of March, 1801. 
The act of 1798, permitting aliens to purchase and hold real estate in thi s 
.State, (passed, it is said, through the influence of Col. W., who was a member 
of the Legislature in that year,) expired by its own limitation, on the 2d of 
April following. 

Col. Williamson assigned to Sir William Pulteney on the 13th of Decem- 
ber, r8oo, for the consideration of $300,000, all the bonds and mortgages held 
by him. 

In the month of March following, he executed to Sir William Pulteney 
five deeds, which were delivered as escrows to Robert Troup, Esq., to be 
delivered to Sir W. P. , in case certain conditions were performed before the 
25th day of October, 1801, which conditions were performed by the execu- 
tion of a deed from Pulteney to Williamson, dated 23d July, 1801. Of these 
five deeds, the first, dated 4th March, 1801, conveys 50,000 acres of land in 
tne County of Ontario ; the second, dated 5th March, 1801, conveys twenty 
lots in the heart of the city of New York, 1784 acres of land in the County of 
Otsego, 1299 acres in the town of Unadilla, 1400 acres in the County of Her- 
kimer, 9000 in the County of Montgomery, 34108 acres in the County of Chen- 
ango :the third, dated 27th March, 1 801, conveys 7000 acres of land in the 
County of Chenango ; the fourth, dated 31st March, 1801, conveys 5000 acres 
of land in the Gerundigut township, and 600 acres in the town of Galena, in 
Cayuga, and all lands in the State of New York, held by the said Williamson : 
the fifth is an assignment of all the personal property, notes, bonds, bills, and 
securities of every description, held by the said Williamson. The considera- 



142 

Col. Williamson, after the termination of his agency, returned 
to England. He afterwards made occasional visits to America. 
He died in the year 1807, (at sea, it is said,) of the yellow fever, 
while on a mission from the British Government to the Havana. 

He was a man of spirit, energy and ability. Prepossessing in 
person, free and frank in manner, generous and friendly in dispo- 
sition, he is remembered to this day as a " fine fellow " b} r the 
farmers who were once young pioneers, and opened his roads and 
hewed his forests. A keen follower of sports, a lover of the horse, 
the rifle and the hound, he was accounted a man, by the rudest 
foresters. High-bred, intelligent, of engaging address, and read 
ily adapting himself to the circumstances of all men, he was 
equally welcome to the cabin of the woodsman or the table of the 
Peer : and whether discussing a horse-race with Canisteo, a school 
project with Prattsburgh, or the philosophy of over-shot wheels 
with Bartle's Hollow, he was entirely at home, and pronounced 
opinions which were listened to with respect. His hale, prompt, 
manly greeting won for him the good will of the settlers, and 
gave him influence at the occasional assemblies of the citizens. 
A crowd of men, for example, waiting in the meadows behind 
the Land Office for the beginning of a horse-race, became impat- 
ient, and at last Canisteo began to kill time by fighting. The 
Colonel, galloping over from the village, had but to exclaim, in 

tion expressed in each, is one dollar, and all lands jsold, or contracted to be 
sold out of the tracts conveyed, are "reserved. 

By the instrument executed on the 23d day of July, r8oi, Sir William Pul- 
teney, in consideration of the execution of the said five escrows, and of the 
sum of twenty shillings, agreed — first, to accept and pay nine setts of bills of 
exchange drawn by Williamson on the 24th March, 1801, for the sum of 
^"5,000 sterling, at two, three and four months after sight : 2d, to indemnify 
Williamson against the effects of bonds and mortgages, to the amount of 
about $70,000 : 3d, to pay Col. W. in three years after the 1st April, 1801, 
^20,000 sterling, and the interest on that sum at five per cent, at the end of 
each year, till all was paid, as a compensation for his services in managing 
•the concerns of the Genesee Association, and also ^"15,000 to pay debts con- 
tracted by him by reason of his management of the said concerns : and 
finally, all claims and demands against Col. W. arising before the 1st April, 
i8ot, are relinquished and discharged. 

These facts appear from records in the office of Secretary of State, copies 
of which in the possession of Robert Campbell, Esq., of Bath, the Editor was 
permitted to examine. 



143 

his clear, cheerful way, as he rode around the mob, " What, boys, 
have you begun the fun already? Don't be in such haste," and 
wrathful Canisteo became pacified. 

He had a gallant and impetuous way of doing what was to 
be done. Where he was, everything was kept stirring. The 
ordinary routine of a land agent's life had no charms for him. To 
sit in a drowsy office the live-long day, among quills, and maps, 
and ledgers, hearing complaints of failing crops, sickness, and 
hard times, pestered with petitions for the making of new roads 
and the mending of broken bridges, was unendurable. He must 
ride through the woods, talk with the settlers, awaken the aliens, 
show his lands to strangers, entertain gentlemen from abroad. 
By the pious and substantial settlers from the east, of whom there 
were many in the county, his tastes and practices were sternly 
condemned, but even these, while they were offended at his trans- 
gressions, and felt sure that no good would come of a state founded 
by such a Romulus, acknowledged the spirit and vigor of the 
man, and were willing to ascribe his failings partially to a military 
and European education. 

He was dark of feature, tall, slender, and erect of figure. His 
habits were active, and he pleased the foresters by vaulting lightly 
to his saddle, and scouring the roads at full gallop. 

Gen. McClure says, " Col. Williamson was an excellent, high- 
minded, honorable man, generous, humane, obliging and cour- 
teous to all, whether rich or poor. In truth and in fact he was a 
gentleman in every sense of the word. He was well qualified for 
the duties conferred upon him as agent of such an immense estate, 
and for the settlement and growth of a new country, so long as 
Sir William Pulteney would furnish the means to improve it." 

Col. Williamson's objects and motives in conducting the affairs 
of the estate, were not merely those of a speculator. His pride 
and spirit were aroused. In invading the wilderness, in hewing, 
burning, bridging, turning and overturning, till the stubborn 
powers of the forest were conquered, broken on the wheel and 
hanged up in terorem, like the rebellious in ancient warfare — in 
these he found excitement. To stand in the midst of the moun- 
tains, and hear the crashing of trees, the ringing of axes, and the 
rattling of the saw-mills — to see wild streams made tame, to see 
the continuous line of emigrant barges moving up the lower river, 



144 

and to feel himself the centre of the movement, would brighten 
the wits of a dull man, much more invigorate one so wakeful as 
Col. Williamson. In his fine, dashing way, he would carry the 
wilderness by storm. Down with the woods ; down with the 
hills ; build bridges ; build barns ; build saw-mills, and shiver 
the forest into slabs and shingles — these were his orders, and they 
express the spirit of his administration. In this swashing 
onslaught his enthusiasm was fired. Besides, the money which 
he controlled, and the power which he wielded, made him a great 
man in the land. He was Baron of the Backwoods — Warden of the 
Wilderness — Hemlock Prince — King of Saw-mills. There was 
not a greater than he in all the land of the west. When, there- 
fore he found himself at the head of a little state which might 
sometime become great, the Napoleon of a war against the 
woods, it is not wonderful that in the excitement of building 
Babylons, or in the exultation of an Austerlitz among the pines, 
' he should be animated with the thoughts and emotions which 
principles are not accustomed to expect in their agents. 

All these dashing operations were fine sport to the men who 
rode on the whirlwind, but to the magician over the water, who 
was expected not only to raise the wind, but to keep it whirling, 
the fun was rather exhausting. To support a missionary of civ- 
ilization in the American backwoods, purely out of philanthropy, 
or to keep amateur city-builders in funds, merely that gentlemen 
might enjoy themselves, were acts of benevolence, not, of course, 
to be expected from the British Baronet. When, therefore, Sir 
William Pulteney became alarmed at the encroachments upon his 
fortune, and abruptly stopped the operations of his viceroy, it 
would be difficult to say what fault could be reasonably found 
with him for this determination. Considering the remoteness of 
his possessions, their tenure under the supposed uncertain laws of 
a republic, and the great uncertainty of the enterprise attempted, 
he did no more than a man of ordinary prudence would have 
done, in his situation, in determining upon a change or a modifi- 
cation of policy, and the exercise of greater caution in his 
expenditures. 

Time has proved that the reasons and expectations which 
induced Col. Williamson to undertake his great enterprise were 
ill-founded ; and upon the strength of these acknowledged errors, 



H5 

he is often sweepingly condemned as a visionary — a heedless, 
wasteful man, engaged in business of which he was ignorant, and 
for which he had little capacity. Against such broad and unqual- 
ified condemnation we must protest. He founded his schemes 
upon the expectation that the tract known as the Genesee coun- 
try would sometime become a region of vast wealth, and that 
through it the products of an indefinite Western county would 
pass to the Atlantic coast. Has time branded him a dreamer for 
these things? His error then, was, in mistaking the channel 
through which Genesee and the West would go to the sea-board. 
But, considering the modes of transit known to the world at that 
time, and the shape and position of the navigable waters which 
drained the Genesee, is any one prepared to say that there was a 
flagrant absurdity in pointing out the Valley of the Chemung 
as the destined outlet of the undefined Northern country ? Most 
men of sense and experience, at the close of the last century, 
entertained this opinion. A prophet, it is true, might have 
unveiled the future to the Scottish chief, and shown him canals 
and railroads ; but, except the wigwam of the Indian doctor, 
where the destinies were questioned by rattling porcupine- quills, 
and shaking the horns of a buffalo-bull, there was no oracle for 
the Western Cadmus to consult. To abuse Col. Williamson and 
his coadjutors, for want of common foresight, is as unreasonable 
as it will be for newspapers sixty years hence, to be astounded at 
the modern project of connecting the Atlantic and Pacific by 
railway to San Francisco, when, "anybody might have seen" 
that the natural port of the Pacific coast was Nootka Sound, and 
that the way to get there from New York would be to take the 
wires by way of Lake Winnipeg and the Saskatchawan river. 



CHAPTER IX. 

STEUBEN COUNTY SINCE THE PERIOD OF SETTLEMENT — DISAS- 
TERS — PROGRESS — PROSPECTS — THE CITIZENS AND THE LAND 
PROPRIETORS. 

The history of that province over which those blameless shep- 
herds of the people, the supervisors of Steuben County, wave 
their transitory sceptres, has now been traced with as much accu- 
racy as the sources of information permitted, from the earliest 
ages to the beginning of the nineteenth century. It has 
appeared how, in the most distant times of which record can be 
borne, that region was covered with the waters of the sea ; 
drifting icebergs then, perchance, scratched the tops of the hills, 
and our home was a pasture where marine herdsmen drove their 
ungainly cattle — whales, sea-lions, and mighty serpents of the 
ocean, and the shark and the sword-fish prowled along the trails 
afterwards trodden by the Indian and the Tory. It has further- 
more appeared how the land, being at length delivered from these 
monsters, rose above the waters, received sunlight and showers, 
was covered with forests, became a hiding-place of wild beasts 
and barbarians, and lay in silence through many centuries, being 
pleased with the murmur of its forests and the rushing sound of 
its rivers ; how at length the clamors of a strange warfare were 
heard at a distance, in the valleys of the lower streams, and 
waxed louder and nearer by degrees until barbarism, ' ' clutching 
its curiously wrought tomahawk, ' ' and gathering its fantastic robe 
about its form, swept by in full retreat, followed by a horde of 
light-haired men who assailed the wilderness with axes, scathed 
it with fire, and tore it with iron harrows. It has appeared how, 
afterwards, a republican baron, coming from the East, built him- 
self a castle out of the trunks of trees, in a broad, round valley, 
begirt with pine and hemlock hillsides, and dwelt there in the 
depths of the forest in true feudal style, exchanging defiant mis- 
sives with potentates who claimed fealty, and entertaining all 
manner of errant gentry, from French dukes to Newmarket 



147 

jockeys, with much better grace, in faith, than the Front de 
Bceufs of the ancient English backwoods, while, to complete the 
similitude, Robin Hood and his lusty foresters reappeared on the 
Canisteo Flats, and there renewed the merriments of Sherwood 
Forest.* 

With the close of this baronial period the present chronicle will 
conclude. Our heroic ages there abruptly ended, and modern 
time set in with a vengeance. The history of the county, after 
that epoch, would be but a record of the incidents which make up 
the daily life of an inland, obscure, almost inaccessible region, as 
the movements of emigrants, the establishment of stage routes, 
the sessions of supervisors, the burning of log-heaps, the building 
of saw-mills, the excitements of courts, trainings and elections — 
all passing by so quietly that, but for the clouds of smoke that 
overhung the hills on still, dry days of autumn, or the occasional 
gusts of martial music from rustic battalions, one standing with- 
out would hardly know that any living thing was stirring within 
the hemlock highlands. A few startling interruptions, as the war 
of 1812 and the Douglas affair, disturbed the routine of daily life, 
but the people kept steadily at work from year to year, had little 
intercourse with the world beyond their own boundaries except 
through the medium of newspapers, had their frolics without 
proclamation to all North America and the adjacent islands, 
opened great and unsightly gaps in the forest, steered thousands 
of rafts through the cataracts of the Susquehanna, and, devoting 
themselves mainly to the task of transforming the wilderness 
into meadows and plow-land, did few memorable things which are 
discoverable by the chronicler. 

L,et us barely glance at the general progress of the county, from 
the close of Col. Williamson's agency to the present time. At 
the time of the agent's departure the county had about two thou- 
sand inhabitants. The work of subduing the forest had been but 



* Curiously enough, we are able to perfect the similitude, by the addition 
of a Friar Tuck. The first Presbyterian clergyman who ministered to the 
spiritual wants of the Canisteo pioneers, is described as "a clever, humor- 
some man, who could drink grog and throw the maul with the best." He 
was a man of enormous muscular strength. Preaching once in early days in 
a warehouse in Angelica he became so much engaged in his subject that he 
dashed a store-desk in pieces with his fist. 



148 

begun, but the beginning had been made vigorously and with 
good hope. A lumber- trade had been opened with the ports of 
the lower Susquehanna and the Chesapeake. Northern men had 
begun to bring grain in considerable quantities to Bath for trans- 
portation to the markets. The location on the Conhocton was 
yet considered highly advantageous. 

The rupture between the proprietors and the agent, though 
sensibly felt at the scene of his prominent operations, was not 
regarded as hopelessly disastrous to the prospects of the county. 
The development of the agent's plan was far from complete, and 
the experiments which he had made were insufficient to determine 
whether his enterprises were wisely or unwisely conceived. The 
fate of ' ' this great Babylon which I am going to build' ' was yet 
uncertain, and it was hoped that, although for the present the 
progress of the town towards an honorable position among the 
cities of the land might be retarded, yet that it would ultimately 
rise from embarrassment and fulfill its destiny. The air-castle, 
though rather dingy and dilapidated, was nevertheless a very fine 
affair, and was not without power to attract people from afar. 
After the year 1800, many men who might have bought lands 
near Geneva, Canandaigua and Rochester, for a trifling price, 
were induced, by the superior advantages for access to a market, 
then offered by the valleys of Steuben, to establish themselves 
among our own ungracious hills. Many a farmer now residing in 
this county has the satisfaction of complaining, that had it not 
been for Williamson's balloons, himself or his father might have 
had the site of a city for their cornfields, or perchance would 
have pastured their flocks on the ground now occupied by some 
stirring village of Genesee, Ontario, or Onondaga. 

But the cold water suddenly showered on the delicate phantoms 
that overhung the forest — soon scattered them. The abrupt dry- 
ing up of the Pulteney Pactolus, that river of gold which had 
hitherto refreshed the thirsty wilderness, caused the plant which 
had been intrusted to the Pine Plains, to grow up scrubbily. A 
very ignominious metropolis, for many years, was the shire-town 
of the county. It was a quarter of a century or more before it 
began to free itself from its deformities, and to cast off its beg- 
garly apparel for comfortable garments, and to pick up Grecian, 



i 4 9 

Gothic and Italian finery to bedeck itself withal. Indeed, imme- 
diately after the departure of Baron Williamson it was threatened 
with destruction in a very strange manner. The clearings in its 
vicinity were abandoned, and a growth of oak of amazing stout- 
ness and activity sprung up. The farmers were fairly over-pow- 
ered, as if by tribes of wild men, and driven from their fields. 
Whole farms were overrun by these invaders. They even pushed 
their conquests to the edge of the village, and stood insultingly 
at the heads of the little streets, like a horde of marauders, 
descending from the hills and pillaging the suburbs of some 
seedy old city, which has barely enough of its ancient vigor to 
keep the brigands outside of the gates. The wild beasts re-took 
possession of the land. Between St. Patrick's Square and Gallow's 
Hill was good hunting. The owl and the wolf clamored nightly 
for re-annexation. The bear thrusting his nose through the gar- 
den pickets, snuffed the odors of the kitchens. In 1811, the 
whole space between the village and the pine-forest, which encir- 
cled it at the distance of about half a mile, was overgrown with 
stout oak stalks, from ten to fifteen feet high. A few huts, occu- 
pied by negroes, were scattered among the bushes half smothered, 
and it was only by sleepless care on the part of the citizens that 
the sprouts were kept down in the streets and market-place, and 
that the whole metropolis, like a babe in the woods, was not 
buried in the leaves, so deep that the robins couldn't find it. It 
was told then, as a great thing, that a farmer on one of the Mar- 
engo farms had raised twenty acres of wheat. To such littleness 
had the standard of greatness shrunken in the abandoned Barony. 
Not only the central village but the whole count} 7 felt the shock 
at the dethronement of Col. Williamson. He had been the life 
of the land, and " times were dead enough when he left," say the 
old settlers. No more the Hudson, the Potomac and the Delaware, 
were startled by proclamations of races in the wilderness : no more 
did rumors of bull-fights and the uproar of horns disturb the goodly: 
no more did gallant retinues of riders gallop through the forest, 
while servants followed with luncheons and baskets of wine. 
Newspaper paragraphs no longer told the citizens of the East of 
great thingsdone in Steuben, and pamphlets no longer enlightened 
London and Edinburg concerning the capabilities of the Conhocton 
river. 



'50 

The county was thenceforward expected to work its own way 
out of the woods ; to hew its own road to independence and pros- 
perity ; to scuffle unhelped with whatever enemies should seek to 
trample it to the earth. After years of hard, and often of discour- 
aging labour, we have gained the upper hand of the enemy. Our 
county, for so long a time proverbially a " hard county' ' — a kind 
of rough handed, two-fisted, ill-fed county, an offence in the eyes 
of Eastern elegance and Northern wealth, is rising fast not only to 
respectability but to consequence, like some great backwoods lout, 
who, from a youth of log-rolling and shingle-shaving, passes to a 
manhood of judicial or senatorial dignity. 

The first forty years of our county's existence were years of iron 
labor. The settlers were poor men, and the discouragements and 
difficulties which they met with will with difficulty be appreciated 
by coming generations, who shall inherit vallies long tilled and 
hills subdued by years of thorough culture. One long familar with 
the farmers of the county says : ' ' ^utfew comparatively of the set- 
tlers ever succeeded in paying up their contracts and getting deeds 
for their land. The high price of the land and the constantly 
accumulating interest on their contracts, was more than they could 
bear. They were compelled to abandon to others their half-cleared 
farms, disheartened and weary. Most of the contracts given by the 
agents of the Pulteneys for the sale of land were assigned from one 
to another several times, before the whole amount of the principal 
and interest due on them was paid." 

For the last twenty years we have occupied the vantage ground, 
and have been engaged in a work not only of subjugation but of 
cultivation. Hard and discouraging work was done during this 
period , and qnite enough of the same remains to be done among 
our stubborn hiljs ; but the increasing independence of the early- 
settled districts and the additional facilities for communication 
with the outer world, placed us upon the whole on the vantage 
ground, and the work of subjugation went on with greater rapidity 
and ardor than at any time before. Railroads began to encom- 
pass us ; a steamboat appeared on Crooked L,ake ; the old farming 
districts began to grow smooth and sightly ; new wildernesses 
were invaded ; cattle and sheep by myriads fed in the pastures ; 
villages were built, and the old dingy towns brightened up and 



i5i 

renewed their youth. Various schemes of progress were agitated. 
Canals and railroads were discussed. At length the rumbling of 
cars was heard on Shawangunk, then on the Susquehanna, then 
on the Chemung, — and the locomotive, ten hours from the Hud- 
son, rushed over our glad frontiers and discharged the Atlantic 
mails at the ancient monumental post of the Senecas. Saw mills 
arose in every pine forest, and in the spring, when the snow on 
the hills melted and the ice in the rivers went down to be piled 
in long battlements on the meadows below, hundreds of lumber- 
men came out of the woods, steered their rafts of boards, timber 
and enormous spars down the torrents to the Chesapeake ; riding 
over huge dams and rocky rapids, sometimes prosperously, and 
sometimes shattering their fleets and suffering shipwreck drown- 
ing, and all marine disasters which await mariners who sail in 
whaleships and frigates. 

' ' Fifteen years ago, ' ' says the Citizen in his Descriptive and 
Historical Sketch, (speaking, in imagination, at the beginning of 
this century,) "standing on an exceedingly high mountain, we 
beheld unbroken forests lying west of the Chenango as far as the 
rainbows of Niagara, and covering the ridges and long slopes of 
the Alleganies. Standing now on that same promontory, behold 
a change. Broad swathes are opened in that meadow of timber. 
Smoke rises from the little chimnies of three thousand cabins, 
scattered among the choice valleys and by the pleasant river sides 
of the wilderness west of Seneca L,ake. The noise of a myriad 
of axes is heard this side of the Mohawk, like the tapping of a 
host of woodpeckers in a"grove : flotillas are riding upon the riv- 
ers, a long and scattered caravan is filing past old Fort Stanwix, 
while New Englanders are afloat in the canoes of Unadilla, and 
stout pioneers are urging upwards the barges of Susquehanna. 
At evening the great forest is dotted with lights. Torches glim- 
mer by the cabins. Trees are burning where fire runs wild 
through the woods, so that in the mid watch, when the torch- 
lights by the cabins are quenched, you may see afar off a zig-zag 
serpent of flame coiling around some mountain knob or wander- 
ing by the lake shore, or pursuing its shining trail through plains 
and marshes. Two sounds disturb the silence of the night — the 
dull plunging of Niagara in the West, and the distant uproar of 



152 

Napoleon's cannon in the East. But what are all those thunders 
that rock the foundation of the other continent, and those tumults 
of kings and cannon, of horsemen and musketeers which the 
nations hear with alarm, compared with that unnoticed war which 
is waged in the forest below you ! ' ' 

Being unfortunately ignorant of the position of this convenient 
mountain (which has been strangely overlooked by the State 
Geologist), it will be impossible to invite the republicans for whom 
these chronicles are written to look off from the same at the pres- 
ent day. A view from some such promontory or from a balloon 
would enable them to see to advantage the present condition of 
our county. One looking thus from above would behold the upland 
forests slashed this way and that with the most lawless violence, 
and the principal valleys freed from their ancient vegetation except 
where long and crooked lanes of elm, sycamore, and willow mark 
the channels of the streams, or where groves of oak stand in the 
midst of the fields, or here and there a cluster of maples or a soli- 
tary pine alone remain of many brethren. 

Nevertheless immense tracts of land are yet covered with the 
forest. Stripes of timber as broad as the height of the hills, 
almost unbroken for miles, line the most cultivated valleys. 
Many broad districts are almost as wild as at the first. Within a 
mile of the villages and clean meadows of the river- valleys, one 
finds yet the rude "settlement," and on the further side of half 
the hills in the County are hollows, which in the provincial pro- 
nounciation of hollers are so suggestive of hemlocks, burnt 
stumps, log cabins, and of what is known in despair at the pov- 
erty of language as "the jumping-off place." There are com- 
paratively few commanding heights from which one does not 
seem to see more forest than farmed land, and there are many 
places where one looks across to districts dented with ravines and 
covered with treetops, where the axe has hardly begun its 
mission. 

Forty years ago almost the entire strengch of the county was in 
the valleys. Great now is the strength of the uplands, and rap- 
idly increasing. The subjugation of these obstinate regions has 
been a labor indeed, and to the eyes of the wanderer from softer 
lands they look as unsightly as the battle-field the day after the 



153 

victory. The black stumps, the rough fences, the islands and 
broad girdles of timber, haggled of outline and bristling with 
long bare spikes, and the half-burnt trunks of trees, are indeed 
uncomely. Our hill-country, however, is calculated from its 
structure to attain generally a good, and often a high degree of 
beauty, when cultivation has removed its primitive roughness. A 
vision of rolling farms divided by wooded gulfs or ravines ; of 
smooth knobs dotted with portly cattle ; of clean slopes covered 
with grain-fields and orchards — the whole forming a landscape 
unsurpassed in rural beauty by ancient and renowned counties of 
the east and north, is a dream of the future by no means too 
extravagant to be indulged in. 

Sixty thousand souls now live within the boundaries of the 
county. Twenty villages and upwards are scattered through the 
towns, some of them holding pretensions to beauty and import- 
ance. The great railway line between the city of New York and 
the Western States passes up the valleys of the Chemung and 
Canisteo, which, at the village of Corning, is joined by two im- 
portant tributaries — one extending to the coal mountain of Penn- 
sylvania where sixty years ago Patterson, the hunter, first 
unearthed the " black diamond " with his tomahawk,— the other 
passing northward through the valley of the Conhocton to the 
Genesee and Buffalo. Another tributary to the great trunk joins 
it at Hornellsville on the Canisteo, which also terminates at 
Buffalo, crossing the Genesee River at Portage Falls. The Can- 
andaigua and Jefferson railroad crosses one corner of the county. 
The Chemung Canal thrusts itself within the county line as far as 
Corning, and the Crooked L,ake gives direct communication with 
the Erie Canal. 

The dreams of our ancients have not become realities, but 
wonders, of which they did not dream, are amongst us. Iron 
monsters more marvellous than any that were seen by geologists 
in the marine herds which of old fed on our sunken meadows, 
rush through the valleys with wild and discordant shrieks. The 
hoot of the engine, and the roar of its chariot, employ the echoes 
of the bluffs. Steamers, and heavy-laden barges plow the lakes 
where once wallowed the Durham boat of the pioneer, or skimmed 
the canoe of the red fisherman. 



154 

Let the reflecting republican, before turning from the perusal 
of these records to his saw-mill or meadow, consider a few of the 
comforts which the citizens of the county enjoys to day, which 
were unknown to the backwoodsman of forty or fifty years ago. 

Then the solitary settler shared his clearing with the populace 
of the forest. Those hairy Six Nations, the bears, the wolves, 
the panthers, the foxes, the catamounts and the weasels, hovered 
around his narrow frontiers to slay and devour. His two or three 
swine or sorry sheep were in nightly peril of the scenes of Wyom- 
ing. Deer bounded before him in his walk through the woods. 
The fires of Indian lodges glimmered among the trees at night. — 
Now his flocks and herds range without fear over great pastures. 
Wagons roll before his dwelling on the roads which were once 
lonely trails. Lights glimmer at night on all sides from farm- 
house windows. He hears the bells in the distant village-steeples. 

Then he was beyond the borders of the Far West. Behind him 
were the Atlantic cities, — before him were tremendous wilds 
which he heard were traversed by the Ohio, the Mississippi, the 
Missouri, rumored to be enormous rivers, on the banks of which 
were brakes and plains, possessed by buffaloes, wild horsemen 
and bears. When he went East, people looked at him as we now 
look at the Mormon from Salt Lake, or the fur trader from Win- 
nipeg. — Now he is in the far East. As one standing on the 
shadow of a cloud sees it gliding under his feet, and presently 
beholds it miles away on the hill-side, so has the pioneer of Steu- 
ben seen the ' ' Far West ' ' gliding from beneath his feet, and now 
he beholds it moving up the slope of the Cordilleras. He reads 
of boilers bursting at the Falls of St. Anthony, of steamers dash- 
ing together at the mouth of the Arkansas, of flues collapsing 
under the Council Bluffs. 

Then, in his lonely clearing, he guessed the hour of the daj r by 
the sunshine on his cabin floor ; he foretold snows, winds and 
droughts, by the shape of the clouds, by the vapors at sunset, by 
the Moon-man's expression of countenance. — Now the clocks of 
Connecticut are ticking in the forlornest hollow : iron pointers, on 
many steeples, publicly expose all irregularities of that luminary 
which governs times and seasons, and almanacs calculated ' ' ex- 
pressly for the meridian of Western New York," tell him exactly 



155 

when to expect freshets, and when to look out for hail-storms. 

Then, the trader, bestriding his horse, jogged off to the sea- 
port through the dark and dismal roads of the forest, dependent 
upon the whims of despotic tavern-keepers and the tender mercies 
of " cross widows ' '* by the way. His yearly assortment of goods 
was dragged in wagons from the Hudson. Now, whirling to the 
city in a night, he may send up by a railway those gorgeous 
fabrics which have superseded the homely merchandize of former 
times ; or the canal boat, laden with his ponderous crates and 
hogsheads, is tugged through the Northern ditches to the Crooked 
Lake, where a steamer politely offers his wheel-house, and escorts 
the fair wanderer into the heart of the hills. 

Then, the lumbermen saw the creeks come leaping down the 
ravines like hearty young mountaineers, pines stood in the glens 
like stupid giants, unconscious that they contained cubic-feet and 
cullings, and the hemlocks made dark the hill-sides and hollows 
with their worthless branches. Now, the pines are so nearly 
extirpated that their uncouth cousins, the hemlocks, are thought 
worthy of the saw. The creeks have been taught useful knowl- 
edge and drive gang-mills, just as in Pagan islands the mission- 
aries make good boys of the little cannibals, and set them at work 
churning and grinding coffee. • 

Then, the flaxen-haired urchin tumbled in the leaves with bear- 
cubs and racoons ; he blackened his face among the half-burnt 
logs ; he was lost to all sense of syntax, but perhaps studied 
arithmetic at winter in the little log-school-house, and learned 
something about the Chinese wall and the antipodes. Then, the 
patriot saw the country going to ruin, without having it in his 
power to sound the alarm, for there was no county newspaper to 
trumpet his warnings to " a profligate and reckless administra- 
tion." Now, there are school-houses, academies and seminaries — 
" bulwarks of liberty " — bristling at all points with rhetoric and 
geometry. Three political newspapers ride every week the length 
and breadth of the county, like chariots armed with scythes. 
Three editors, fit successors of the Shiversculls and Brighthatchets 
of old, brandish the political scalping knife, and at times drop 
their ferocious weapons, to touch the lyre of poetry or the viol of 

* Vide McClure, Norr. 



156 

romance, at those brief intervals when the great congressional 
bass-drum ceases its sullen roar in the Republic's capitol. 

Of the things to be attained by the county at a future day, we 
will not attempt to prophecy. The chief agricultural eminence 
now believed to be within our reach, is in the dairy line. Dis- 
tinguished graziers indulge in dreams of a Buttermilk Age, when 
the churns of Steuben will be as renowned as the forges of Pitts- 
burgh, or the looms of Lowell. They publicly assert that while 
our neighbors of Allegany may presume to make cheese, and our 
cousins of Ohio may hope to shine in the grease market, it will be 
presumption in them, or in any other tribes west of the Genesee, 
to try to rival the butter of Steuben : that the grass abounding on 
our juicy hills possesses a peculiar flavor and a mysterious virtue, 
and will produce most stupendous and unparalleled butter ; that 
while there is much grass of the same quality in Chemung, some 
in Onondaga, and scanty patches elsewhere, the wretched natives 
of Ohio are utterly destitute of it, as also are all those miserable 
myriads who extract a substance from the herbage of the prairies, 
which they insanely style "butter;" that, feeding upon this 
grass, calves have attained an appalling magnitude ; the ox may, 
by proper encouragement, become gigantic, and the Hornby steer, 
with his broad horns and deep flanks, will be looked upon with 
unspeakable envy by those rattish red bullocks that migrate in 
such immense hordes, like the ill-favored Huns of old, from Illinois 
and Indiana to the New York market.* 

To the degree of physical prosperity to be attained by the county 
hereafter, one will hardly venture to set a limit. Let its citizens, 
first of all things, have a care that they themselves be men of 
whom the Republic need not be ashamed — God-fearing, law-abid- 
ing, intelligent, and free men, and they need not doubt that the 
future will fulfil the promise of the present. Failing in this great 
thing, it would be better that the land had remained a wilderness. 

There are a few considerations respecting the relations whidh 
have heretofore existed, and which have not yet ceased to exist, 
between the citizens of the county and the original foreign pur- 
chasers and their heirs, which may with propriety be here pre- 
sented . 



* Speech of a prominent agriculturist at a " Railroad meeting." 



157 

It is now about sixty years since the greater part of the county 
became the property of the London Associates. From that time 
until the present day, an office has been kept at the shire-town of 
the county, for the sale of lands. The lauds have been sold in 
small parcels, and upon credit, the purchaser taking immediate 
possession. The most valuable portions of the county have thus 
been long sold : but considerable tracts of land are yet undisposed 
of, and actions against single splitting, tort-feasors, are yet brought 
in the name of Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland and King 
of Hanover. 

As was almost unavoidable, from the nature of these relations, 
there has been no love lost between the citizens and the proprietors. 
During the agency of Col. Williamson there seems to have been 
a cordial under-standing between the two parties. The original 
proprietors were men of generous and enlightened spirit. Sir 
William Pultenej^ was a statesman of high standing. Mr. Colqua- 
houn had also mingled in public affairs, and was distinguished 
as a philanthropist. The administration of the estate in the first 
years of the settlement was conducted with an evident regard for 
the prosperity of the settler, and with a liberality and justice on 
the part of the proprietors which none are more ready to acknowl- 
edge than those who dealt with them. It is since the period of 
the earliest settlements that the policy and tone of the alien owners 
have failed to command the respect of the citizens. 

The relation, and the sole relation, which for forty years and 
upwards has existed between the proprietors and citizens, has been 
that of sellers and buyers. So long as the former confine their 
claims to consideration to this relation, it cannot be alleged against 
them that they have transcended the bounds of what is considered 
reputable amongst men of business. They have required high 
prices for their lands, it is true, even the very highest prices that 
could be borne, but to demand high prices for lands or chattels is 
not considered an offence against the rules of reputable dealing 
amongst men of business. No one is compelled to buy. It is true 
that men have been required to fulfil their agreements with the 
land-holders, and, in default thereof, have been made to suffer the 
legal consequences, but neither against this can one, according to 
the settled maxims of common dealing, object. The law gives the 



158 

right, and it is the practice of men to avail themselves of it. There 
are many large land proprietorships in the United States. We do 
not know that the administration of the generality of these is 
characterized by any greater degree of liberality than is that of the 
Pulteney and Hornby estates. The proprietors of the latter have 
certainly not insisted upon their strict legal rights, but. have hab- 
itually refrained from exercising the utmost stringency which the 
letter of the law would permit and have many times granted indul- 
gence to those in delinquenc) 7 which they were not bound to grant. 
Whatever causes of quarrel may have existed between purchasers 
and agents of the proprietors are not fit subjects of comment here ; 
we speak merely of the general policy of the owners in adminis- 
tering the affairs of the estate, and hold that so long as they are 
content to confine their claims to consideration to their character 
as sellers of land, it must be admitted that they have conformed 
to the rules of common dealing amongst men. But if, beyond 
this, they should have the effrontery to lay claims to public grati- 
tude for services rendered to the county in its days of toil and priva- 
tion, or should demand credit for liberality in the administration 
of the affairs of the estate, of a higher tone than is generally exer- 
cised in this lower world, these pretensions would be simply pre- 
posterous. We do not know that any such claims are put forth. 
The only concern of the proprietors has been to get as much money 
as it was possible to get, and whether settlers lived or starved has 
not, so far as human vision can discern, had a straw's weight in 
their estimation. Many instances no doubt there have been of 
kind consideration on the part of employees of the estate, and some 
of these gentlemen have merited and obtained, the respect of those 
with whom their business brought them in contact, but the gener- 
al spirit of the administration of the successors of the original 
proprietors, considering it as a matter affecting the interests of a 
little State, has been mean and narrow. A frank, generous, and 
considerate bearing of the proprietors, it is perhaps safe to say, 
would have obviated nearly all of that hostility of the people which 
it is so easy to ascribe wholly to democratic cupidity and jealousy. 
The alien proprietorship deserves no thanks from the public, and 
probably will never think it advisable to ask for any. It has been 
a dead, disheartening weight on the county. The undeniable fact 



159 

that a multitude of hard-working men have miserably failed in 
their endeavors to gain themselves homes — have mired in a slough 
of interest and instalment, leaving the results of their labors for 
others to profit by, should be of itself sufficient to shame the 
absurd pretension of pratronage, if it is ever put forth. The young 
county, full of rued and indomitable vigor, gained its present posi- 
tion of independence by work and courage, and in spite of the in- 
cubus which rested upon it. It has to thank no human patron for 
its victory. 

And it is well that this is so. It is well that strong arms and 
stout hearts have achieved the conquest of this wilderness, unaid- 
ed by patrons, either at home or abroad. Fight makes might. 
The discipline of a half a century of poverty and tedious labor 
has made this people stronger of heart and hand than they would 
have been if the hemlocks had snapped like icicles, or the hills 
had proved softer than old meadow lands, or the apparitions of 
foreign Peers had hovered in the air, smiling encouragement to 
indigent squatters, and shaking showers of silver from the clouds. 

There are certain other considerations arising from the relations 
which have so long existed between the citizens of the county and 
the foreign proprietors which may be here presented. No state of 
things can be imagined more offensive to democratic prejudices 
than that created by the relations existing between the people of 
this county and the heirs of Pulteney. Few stronger temptations 
to disregard the rights of property and to advocate something 
akin to that Agrarianism so much dreaded in republican com- 
munities by those distrustful of popular rule, are often presented 
to a populace, than such as arise from the tenure by foreign Lords 
of immense tracts of land in a country heartily hostile to every- 
thing savoring of aristocracy. No lawlessness would naturally be 
more readily excused by the popular sense than that which repu- 
diated the European claims of title, and formed illegal combina- 
tions to harrass the proprietors, and to set at nought the edicts of 
lawgivers, and the process of courts in their favor. What can be 
imagined more annoying to democratic feeling than to see, as the 
orators sometimes tell us, the money of republicans, earned by 
desperate labor, rolling in incessant streams to the treasuries of 
British Lords — the sufferers thereby believing, at the same time, 



i6o 

that these rivulets of coin are kept up by some kind of jugglery. 
What group would so well serve the purposes of the orator and 
the demagogue, as that of poor, brave and free-born farmers 
standing in the posture of serfs to foreign Nebuchadnezzars ? 
What better pictures to adorn the popular harangue, or the 
County's Book of Martyrs, sometimes opened before sympathising 
juries, than those of foreign Nebuchadnezzars riding over the 
necks of prostrate democrats ; of foreign Nebuchadnezzars plying 
the rack, the boot and the thumbscrew to the " unterrified ;" of 
foreign Nebuchadnezzars hunting shingle-splitters with blood- 
hounds and janizaries, throwing farmers into fiery furnaces and 
dens of lions, and making a "St. Bartholemew's " among the 
squatters ? 

That under these circumstances defective foreign titles should 
have been amended by the Legislature of the State, and the rights 
of the proprietors carefully regarded and repeatedly asserted ; 
that the tender mercies of the commonwealth should have reached 
such a climax of tenderness as to relieve the proprietors from the 
payment of taxes on their wild lands and to rebuke as unrighteous 
and impertinent the demands of the settlers that these indigent 
aliens should share in the maintenance of the roads by which 
they profited, and of the courts which they crowded with their 
suits ; that for sixty years their office should have stood unmo- 
lested and unthreatened in the midst of a populace doubtful of the 
legality of their claims and aggrieved by their perseverance in a 
policy which is popularly considered unjust and disreputable ; 
that their agents have never been flagrantly insulted, nor their 
foresters thrown into mill-ponds ; that the process of the courts 
has seldom been illegally impeded and never effectually resisted, 
and that juries have never refused to render for the proprietors 
verdicts required by the law and the facts ; that by a community 
abundantly intelligent to form unlawful combinations which 
would seriously disturb the operations of the land agency, no such 
unlawful combinations have been formed, but that the only rem- 
edies sought for that which was believed to be unjust and oppres- 
sive, have been by applications to the legislatures and by defences 
in the courts. These are things which those who tremble for the 
sacredness of property in republics will do well to consider. 



i6r 

The duty of the citizens to the alien proprietors is plain ; to 
urge an observance of it would be justly offensive. There is no 
disposition in the mass of citizens to grant the proprietors any- 
thing less than justice. Daw will be regarded ; rights will not be 
disturbed ; public faith will not be violated, and to urge in this 
case the practice of common honesty would be in the highest 
degree insulting. So long as the courts and the legislatures 
recognize the title of the proprietors, the people will not discredit 
the commonwealth by illegal resistance to authority. 

Amidst all the causes of vexation which encompass us, there 
are yet various pleasant reflections for the exasperated republican 
to console himself withal, not the least of which is, the certainty 
that we shall in due time be delivered from the feudal phantoms 
which have so long beset us. 

The mill-wheel turned by water never rests, but the institution 
that goes by land must soon or later stop grinding. The water 
that pours through the floom goes down to the sea, but rises 
again in fogs and vapors ; it ascends to the clouds ; the winds 
blow it landward ; it falls again upon the hill tops, and again 
pours through the floom. For the land office there is no such 
hope. The element that keeps its wheels in motion never evap- 
orates. Acres of gravel do not readily become clouds and rain 
themselves again into the Duke of Cumberland's pond ; and sec- 
tion lots, especially if they contain a ton or two of mountains, are 
most discouraging materials for a fog to feed upon. The repub- 
lican, therefore, terrified or unterrined, may confidently look for- 
ward to the time when the coronets of English Peers will no 
longer glitter in the air, greatly to the disturbance of the public 
temper, when "articles," "instalments," "interest," "assign- 
ments," "back payments," and all the terms of that unpopular 
vocabulary will become dead language ; when the deputy sheriff's 
occupation will be gone, and when Ernest Augustus, Duke of 
Cumberland and King of Hanover, having been honestly and 
fairly paid for that which the law declares to be his, will beg no 
more the thunder of the courts to avenge, or the shield of the 
legislatures to protect him, but will abandon his title-deeds, dis- 
charge his stewards, and vanish forever behind the fogs of the 
Atlantic Ocean. 



CHAPTER OF MISCELLANIES. 

THE INDIANS. 

It will not be necessary to speak of the history, laws or cus- 
toms of the Six Nations in this volume ; sufficient informat on 
for present purposes, as to those matters, is possessed by the 
popular mind. Steuben County constituted a part of the domain 
of the Senecas. The Indians with whom the pioneer had inter- 
course were from the North, and visited this region only to hunt. 
Many hundreds of them came in the winter from the Genesee, 
and even from the Niagara, built their lodges around in the 
woods, and killed deer for their summer's stock of dried venison, 
and other wild animals for their peltry. 

The complement of a hunting lodge varied according to circum- 
stances. Sometimes a solitary old savage made his wigwam 
apart from his brethren, and hunted, fished and slept in silence ; 
sometimes the neat lodge of a couple of young comrades might 
be seen on some little island of the river, and sometimes the wood - 
man came upon a camp-fire blazing in the forest by night, where 
a score or more of hunters, squaws and children were eating and 
drinking in a ve^ free and comfortable manner. The Indian " at 
home " was not often found by the pioneers to be that taciturn 
and immovable Roman which the romancers paint him. When 
before the fire of his wigwam with half a-dozeu companions, he 
talked, laughed and joked, and had an odd habit of making a 
meal every quarter of an hour, as if afflicted with a chronic hunger, 
putting his hand into the kettle, or fishing up with a sharp stick 
a piece of venison as big as his fist at every pause of the conversa- 
tion, till the young settler, witnessing this perpetual banquet, 
feared that he would kill himself. He did not talk in riddles or 
allegories like those whalebone braves who stalk through the 
novels, but was often inclined to be shrewd and comical in his lan- 
guage, and sometimes loved practical jokes not of the most deli- 
cate order. 

During the first few years of the settlement, many of the 
inhabitants were uneasy at the presence of the Indians. Some 



163 

prepared to leave the county, and a few actually did leave it from 
apprehension of an attack. After the defeat of Harmer and St. 
Clair, in the Northwestern territory, the savages were often insol- 
ent and abusive, but Wayne's victory on the Miami, in 1794, put 
an end to their plots, and they afterwards conducted themselves 
with civility. Some of the settlers, however, were not entirely 
assured for several years. The wives of many of the emigrants 
from the East, unused to wild life, and familiar with the terrible 
fame of the Six Nations, lived in constant alarm — not an inexcu- 
sable fear when a score or two of barbarians came whooping 
to the cabin door, or raised the midnight yell in their camp by 
the creek-side, till even the wolves were ashamed of them. 

The intercourse between the settlers and the Indians, were gen- 
erally friendty and social. The latter, however, had occasion some- 
times to complain of lodges destroyed and furs stolen, and of other 
annoyances to be expected from civilized men. A hunter living at 
the Eight Mile Tree, (Avoca,), wished to drive the Indians from a 
certain hunting ground. These Native Americans were singu- 
larly reluctant to labor, and rather than chop down a tree for fuel, 
would walk half a mile to pick up an armful of scattered sticks. 
Founding his scheme upon this trait of character, the hunter cut 
a great many branches from the trees in ihe vicinity of their 
camps, bored augur-holes into them, filled the orifices with gun- 
powder, plugged them carefully, and strewed these treacherous 
engines through the woods. The Indians knew not what good 
spirit to thank for this miraculous shower of fire- wood, and gath- 
ered a great supply for their lodges. The disasters that followed 
were unaccountable. Now a loud explosion blew a quart of coals 
into the face of some mighty chief — then another hidden maga- 
zine being kindled, filled the eyes of the presiding squaw with 
dust and ashes, and another hoisted the pot off the fire, or hurled 
the roasting venison into the basket where the papoose was sleep- 
ing. The wood was plainly bewitched. Timber with such fiery 
snap was not to be endured. The Indians abandoned the neigh- 
borhood with precipitation, and left the hunter in quiet enjoyment 
of his forest rights. 

There were some occasions when the Indian was seen in his 
glory, arrayed in flaming blankets, adorned with plumes, and 
medals, girt with curious belts, from which glittered the knife and 



164 

tomahawk. Thus shone the warriors on their return from the 
convention at Newtown, in the winter of 1791.* But after a few 
years of familarity with civilized men, the savage was seldom 
seen abroad in ancient style. The braves were inclined to become 
utter vagabonds, and gradually adopted that mixture of civilized 
and savage dress, which it is not going too far to pronounce shock- 
ing. Romance was horrified. The " dark-eyed forest-belles," 
so dear to poetry, looked like stage-drivers. 

The traffic in liquors here, as elsewhere, proved ruinous to the 
unfortunate Indians. A large portion of their game was bartered 
for spirits. A favorite place for their carouses at Bath was in the 
bushes at the edge of the village, opposite the present jail. Here, 
floundering in the under-bush, howling, singing and screaming 
all night, they suggested vivid and singular dreams to the sleep- 
ing villagers. On such occasions the squaws, like considerate 
wives, stole the knives of their lords, and retired to the woods, 
till the fainter and less frequent yells from the bushes announced 
that the " Romans" were becoming overpowered by sleep. The 
townsmen were sometimes amused at their fishing. A half-a- 
dozen Indians wading up the river, and pushing a canoe before 
them would spear their boat half full of fish in an incredibly 
short time, and sell their cargo for a mere trifle. The spear was 
but a pole with a nail in the end of it. 

About thirty years ago, Mr. Joshua Stephens, a young man of 
Canisteo, was found dead in the woods, having been shot by two 
rifle balls. The murder had been evidently committed by Indians. 
Two of these, named Curly-eye and Sundown, were arrested on 
suspicion of having committed the deed, and were afterwards 
tried at Bath. The affair created a great sensation, and the trial 
was attended by a large concourse of people. Red Jacket and 
other prominent chiefs were present. The evidence against the 
prisoners was of a strong character, but they were acquitted. 
After this event the Indians became shy and evacuated the county, 
and never again returned except in straggling bands. 

* Mr. David Cook, a settler of Painted Post, met, while moving up, 300 
Indians on the Chimney Narrows, who were going to the Treaty. On their 
return they were detained for a long time at Painted Post by a great snow- 
storm, till they could make snow-shoes, greatly to the annoyance of the 
settlers. 



165 

We have been told, on pretty good authority, of an " Indian- 
hater " living near the mouth of Mud Creek, in the town of 
Bath, many years ago. A settler in that neighborhood was 
requested one morning by one of his neighbors to go out to the 
woods and help him bring in a large buck which he had shot. On 
coming to the designated place, the hunter opened a pile of brush, 
and showed his companion the dead body of an Indian. He said 
his father's family had been massacred by the savages in the 
Revolution, and since that event he had killed every Indian he 
could meet in a convenient place. This was nearly the twentieth. 

INDIAN NAMES, ETC. 

The Indians and their institutions can, upon the whole, be 
spared from our social system, though there are not wanting those 
who find it in their hearts to deplore the decay of both — a melan- 
choly thing to think of, truly. Yet, when it is considered how 
many of their practices was irreconcilable with the maxims of 
distinguished jurists, the most enthusiastic admirer of barbarism 
must admit that the preservation of the statutes and ceremonies 
of the Long House would be attended, at least, with inconven- 
ience. The tomahawk, the scalping knife and the javelin, are 
properly, we think, excluded from the accoutrements of a well- 
dressed, civilized man, and we are quite sure that an enlightened 
public opinion would frown upon that grave and respectable citi- 
zen, who, out of respect for the earliest inhabitants of the count} 7 , 
should appear at town-meeting, at church, or at any other public 
assemblage, painted with red paint and black, decorated with por- 
cupine quills, and arrayed in a crimson blanket. A cultivated 
community will always entertain sentiments of reverence for 
ancient fashions and for the customs of former generations ; yet, 
would not such a spectacle as that of the elderly gentleman and 
clergy of the county, shrieking, howling, and dancing- the grand 
war-Dance around a post in the Public Square of the shire 
town, fill the mind of .a judicious man with melancholy forebod- 
ings with regard to the sanity of such elderly gentleman and 
divines ? There are certain vestiges of the ancient trihes for 
which men of taste and learning earnestly plead — the names which 
they attached to their lakes, rivers, towns and castles. Whether 
deep and sonorous as Otsego, Niagara, Cayuga, Tioga, Onondagua, 



I 



166 

or light and musical as Unadilla, Wyalusing, Canisteo, Susque- 
hanna, or abrupt and warlike as Mohawk, Conhocton, Shemokin, 
Tunkhannock, the names given by the Six Nations, were sweet 
or heroic of sound. The barbarous dialects which give us Penob 
scot and Passamaquoddy, or the still more atrocious Chatta 
hoochie, Okechobee, Tombigby, Withlacoochie and other fright- 
ful words which prick the Southern ear, (though atoned for by 
the noble Alabama, Catawba, Savannah,) and the utterly heath- 
enish Michilimaciuac, Pottawottamie, Oshkosh, Kaskaskia and 
Winnepeg, of the North West, are fit for Ghouls, and ' ' men 
whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders." 

A lecture may profitably be read on the subject of names to 
people of our own and adjoining counties, and in doing so we do 
but echo what has been frequently proclaimed through other 
trumpets. The American map looks like a geographical joke. 
We name our towns after all heroes, from Hector to General 
Lopez — after all patriots, from Maceabaus to Daniel Shays — after 
all beasts, birds, fishes, and creeping things — to which there is 
certainly no objection, but one may plead that when we have 
exhausted Plutarch's Lives, and the Pension Roll, a few of the 
fine old Indian names may be recovered. In our own county, the 
musical and forest-like Tuscarora, was changed first to Middletowv , 
which caused confusion in the mails, (that popular name having 
been fairly grabbed by other towns which were so lucky as to 
stand half way between two places,) and afterwards to Addison, in 
honor, probably, of the essayist, who never saw a stump, a raft, or 
a saw-mill. The post-office of Tobehanna was lately changed to 
Altai, which is a mountain range in the antipodes, and would 
lead strangers to suppose that Tyrone was settled by Siberians. 
Our neighbors of Chemung became disgusted at the odd, but 
significant and historical name of Horse-heads, (being the place 
where Gen. Sullivan killed his horses,) and elegantly changed it to 
Fairport, indicating, we suppose, that scows on the Chemung Canal 
are there secure from tempests. It is unfortunate that the school- 
master was out of town when the change was made, for the 
offending Saxon might have been disguised under the magnificent 
syllabels of Hippocephali. At the head of Seneca Lake lived for 
many years a famous Indian Queen, Catharine Montour, a half- 
breed and surmised to have been a daughter of Count Frontenac. 



167 

Her village was known far and wide as Catharine 's Town. They 
now call it Jefferson — an act of " proscription " which the great 
Republican would have scowled at.* Painted Post will probably 
have to go next under the reign of refinement — acapital name, sug - 
gestive, historical and picturesque. If it is desirable to be known 
abroad, citizens of that village will do well to let the name stand 
as it is, for while Painted Post will arrest the stranger's eye more 
quickly perhaps than any other name on the map of Western 
New York, if this is changed to Siam or Senegambia, Ajax or 
Coriolanus, or any other title which the fashion of the day requires, 
the Painted Posters cannot hope to be distinguished from the mob 
of citizens who dwell in villages bearing the names of foreign 
kingdoms, and heroes of the " Silurian epoch." 

Similar advice is ready for our neighbors at the foot of Crooked 
Lake whenever it may be called for. Penn- Yan is undoubtedly 
a very queer word — rather Chinese at least — and when pronounced 
with the favorite twang of our ancients, Pang Yang, the sound 
is as clearly " celestial " as Yong Kiang, and the stranger would 
expect to find the village adorned by Mandarins and Joshes, and 
to see the populace from the seniors down, diverting themselves 
with kites, fire-crackers and lanterns. For the relief of puzzled 
philologists, however, it may be explained that the word was not 
imported in a tea-chest, but was made from the first syllables of 
the words Pennsylvanian and Yankee, and indicates the races of 
the first settlers. It should by no means be disturbed. 

It is a pity that so many fine villages of Western New York 
are saddled with names absurdly borrowed from the Old World. 
It would seem as if Congress had granted bounty lands to 
heroes of the Trojan and Punic wars ; at all events, the names of 
those old veterans are affixed to more townships than there were 
sons of Priam. Buffalo, Oswego, Canandaigua and Genesee are 
almost the only towns of importance which have escaped the 
Greeks and Romans. 

Our own country must confess itself to be destitute of European 
or classical townships but can yet boast of very illustrious neigh- 
bors. We have but to step over our Northern boundry to "see 
Naples and die." The distance from Naples to Italy, though 

* The actual village may have been a little out of town — but that makes 
no difference. 



i68 

greater here than it is in Europe, is yet but inconsiderable, while 
the distance from Italy to Jerusalem is less than in the Old World. 
In fact, the City of David here abuts the land of Caesar. On the 
Eastern side of the county behold the hero Hector, a brown 
Republican farmer, shaking no more the bloody spear as he looks 
from his orchards into the waters of Seneca, having long since 
exchanged the chariot for the horse-rake. His old antagonist, 
Ulysses, has located his land-warrant in the next range. On the 
West Ossian howls his humbugs in the latitude of Loon Lake, 
and Saxon Alfred lives unmolested by marauding Danes. The 
Spartans have colonized the adjoining corner of Livingston 
County, and appear to have quite given up black broth and 
laconics. The Athenians are to be found at the mouth of the 
Chemung,* and when the up-river raftmen, whooping and yell- 
ing, steer their rafts down the spring-flood, the citizens of the 
town are probably reminded of the time when the Goths came 
with similar uproar through the Hellespont, and sacked their 
city — a blow from which, judging from the present state of fine 
arts at Tioga Point, it would seem that the seat of the muses never 
recovered. 

Crooked Lake 'is the translation of Keuka, the aboriginal name. 
Conhocton signifies come-together. It is sometimes erroneously 
rendered Trees-i?i-the-water. Five Mile Creek was formerly called 
Ca?ioni. Gen. McClure says that Bath bore the name of Tanigh- 
n.^guanda, by no means a euphonious one. Chemung is said to 
mean Big-bone. The tradition that the identical bone by which 
the name was suggested, was taken from the river-bank by boat- 
men after the settlement must be erroneous. The Indians had a 
village and corn-field near Elmira, at the time of Sullivan's expe- 
dition, named Chemung, and the river was called the Chemung 
Branch. Further information concerning the aboriginal names of 
localities in this county we cannot give, and would be glad to 
receive. 

GAME, ETC. 

It is said in a manuscript, consulted in the preparation of this 
volume, that "Many of the hunters estimated that there were 

* Athens at the mouth of Chemung, was formerly Tioga Point. The old 
name shows sense, the new one the want of it. 



169 

from five to ten deer on every hundred acres of land in the county, 
or in that proportion throughout the country over which they 
hunted. The probability is, that this estimate would not be too 
high for many parts of the forest which were favorite haunts of the 
deer, but then there would be other tracts which they frequented 
but little, so that for the whole extent of territory embraced in the 
present limits of the county, equal to about 900,000, acres it would 
probably be correct to estimate that at the first settlement of the 
country, there were, on an average, as many as four deer for every 
hundred acres of land — making the number within the present 
limits of the county, not less than 36,000. 

An intelligent and respectable man, who came from Pennsyl- 
vania among the first emigrants from that State, used to relate 
that in the fall of the year 1790, or 1791, two young men came 
from near Northumberland up the river in a canoe, on a hunting 
expedition, built a lodge at the mouth of Smith's Creek, on the 
Conhocton, and hunted in that neighborhood. In the course of 
two months they killed upwards of two hundred deer, several elk, 
some bears and three panthers. Klk were at that time quite 
numerous in most parts of the county, and were found south of 
the Canisteo River, ten or fifteen years after. They also killed a 
number of wolves, foxes and martins, and a few beaver. The 
hunters preserved as much of the venison as they could, and with 
that and the skins they had taken, they loaded two large canoes, 
and early in the winter returned to Northumberland, where they 
sold their cargoes for upwards of $300. 

Sixty years of persecution with hounds and rifle have not exter- 
minated the deer ; but, as may well be believed, the buck that 
now shakes his horns in the forest, does so with little of that 
confidence with which in former times his predecessors tossed 
aloft their antlers. In twenty-four hours his ribs may be smoking 
on the dinner-table of a hotel, his hide may be steeping in the 
vats of the mitten-makers, and his horns may be grating under 
the rasps of the men that make cane-heads and knife-handles. 
In the days before the conquest, notwithstanding the depredations 
of the wolves and Indians, the deer constantly increased in num- 
bers, or at least held their own, and lived in a high state of exhil- 
aration. It was a fine sight, that of a full-grown buck racing 
through the woods, clearing "fifteen to twenty feet, often twen- 



170 

ty-five feet, and sometimes more than thirty feet of ground, at a 
single jump." The last elk killed in the county was shot in the 
town of Lindley, about forty years ago. 

As for the wolves, history despairs of doing them justice. 
They deserve a poet. How they howled, and howled, and 
howled ; how they snarled and snapped at the belated woodsman ; 
how they killed the pigs and the sheep ; how they charmed the 
night with their long drawn chorus, so frightful that "it was 
enough to take the hair off a man's head," and yet so dismally 
hideous that it could not but be laughed at by the youngsters — 
all these must be imagined ; words are too feeble to do justice to 
the howling of one wolf in the day time, much less to the howl- 
ing of ten wolves at night, in the depth of a hemlock forest. 
Each pack had its chorister, a grizzled veteran, perhaps, who 
might have lost a paw in some settler's trap, or whose shattered 
thigh declared him a martyr for the public good. This son of the 
Muses, beginning with a forlorn and quavering howl, executed a 
few bars in solo ; then the whole gang broke in with miracles of 
discord, as in a singing school the full voiced choir shouts in 
chorus, after the teacher has shown them " how that chromatic 
passage ought to be executed." All the parts recognised by the 
scientific, were carried by these "minions of the moon." Some 
moaned in barytone, some yelled in soprano, and the intermedi- 
ate discords were howled forth upon the night air in a style that 
would make a jackall shiver. The foreign musician, awaked 
from his dreams by such an anthem, might well imagine himself 
fallen from a land where the Red Republicans had it all their own 
way, and having abrogated the rules of rythm and dynamics, 
with other arbitrary and insufferable vestiges of the feudal sys- 
tem, had established musical socialism. The wolves and their 
howling linger more vividly than any other features of the wilder- 
ness in the memory of old settlers. It is only within a few years 
that they found the land too hot for them. It is not a great while 
since the citizens of the shire towns were occasionally behowled 
from the RollWay Hills, and among those who, fifteen years ago, 
were very young school-boys, the memory is yet green of that 
day when the weightiest and gravest of the townsmen, with many 
others who were not quite so weighty and grave, sallied forth 



171 

with the avowed purpose of exterminating the wolves which 
lurked in the surrounding hills — a campaign barren of trophies 
indeed, but which must have carried dismay into the councils of 
the enemy, and convinced them of the uselessness of opposition 
to their "manifest destiny." A few members of this ancient 
family may yet lurk in the wild corners of the country, but the 
more discreet have withdrawn to the solitudes of Pennsylvania. 

The panthers have vanished, hide and hair, leaving a reputa- 
tion like that of the Caribs. The "painter," in lack of lions, 
must always be the hero of desperate hunting tales, and were it 
not for the too well established fact that his valor was rather 
freely tempered with discretion, he would be a highly available 
character for the novelists. Except when wounded, they were 
not feared. Though powerful of frame and ferocious of face, they 
belied physiognomy and were generally quite willing to crawl off, 
or at most to stand at bay when met by the hunters. This for- 
bearance, it must be confessed, arose not so much from sweetness 
of temper as from a bashfulness which almost amounted to cow- 
ardice. They disappointed the expectations of their friends, and 
invariably forsook their backers before coming up fairly to the 
"scratch." However, the fierce face, the lion-like proportions, 
(they were from seven to ten feet long,) and the collusion of the 
novelists, have proved too much for the truth, and the " Great 
Northern Panther ' ' at this day rivals in popularity Captain Kyd 
and Black-Beard. When exasperated by wounds he showed 
himself worthy of this high favor, but under ordinary provocation 
he was scarcely more terrible than a wood-chuck. For instance, 
a housewife, who owned Ireland as her native land, while attend- 
ing to her domestic duties in the cabin, heard signals of distress 
among the pigs. On going out to see what had befallen her 
porkers, she found a fine shoat attacked by a panther. It was 
evidently the first acquaintance of the robber with animals of this 
species, for as often as he sprang upon the back of his prey, the 
pig squealed dismally, and the panther bounced off in amazement, 
as if he had alighted upon a hot stove. The lady ran screaming, 
and with arms uplifted, to rescue her pig, and the " Great North 
American Panther," instead of annihilating both pig and " lady- 
patroness " on the spot, scrambled into the top of a tree with evi- 



172 

dent alarm. The woman sent her husband straightway to fetch 
Patterson the hunter with his rifle, and stood under the tree to 
blockade the enemy. Several times the latter offered to come 
down, but his intrepid sentry screamed and made such violent 
gestures, that the panther drew back in consternation. The 
hunter came in an hour or so and shot it just as it took courage 
to spring. 

The bear, too — the wise, respectable and independent bear was, 
in early times, a citizen of substance and consideration. Statistics 
concerning him are wanting. Disturbed by bone-breaking bullets 
in his berry gardens and plum orchards, blinded by gusts of 
buckshot that blew into his face as he put his head out of his 
parlor window, punched with sharp sticks by malicious young- 
sters as he sat nursing his wounded hams in the seclusion of a 
hollow log, plagued by ferocious traps which sometimes pinched 
his feet, sometimes grasped his investigating nose with teeth of 
steel, assailed in his wooden tower by axe-men hewing at its 
basis, while boys with rifles waited for its down-fall — the bear, we 
say, distressed by a line of conduct that rendered his existence 
precarious, emigrated to the mountains of the Key Stone State in 
disgust. 

As for the lesser tribes, known as wild-cats, catamounts and 
lynxes, there were flourishing families of those creatures in all 
parts of the land, and they are still occasionally heard from in 
the outer districts. The last one worthy of historical notice 
prowled for a time in the interior woods, but his head at last pre- 
eminent among the heads and tails of racoons and wood-chucks, 
adorned the Log Cabin of Bath in the picturesque election of 1840. 

There were but few beaver remaining in the streams at the 
time of the settlement. The lively trade in peltry which had 
been carried on between the Indians and Europeans was attended 
with a disastrous loss of fur to those poor creatures. In 1794, 
there were a few beaver remaining in Mud Lake, but the renowned 
Patterson set his eye upon them, and soon appeared on the har- 
monious shores of that secluded pond with his arms full of traps. 
Seven of the beaver were caught, the eighth and last escaped 
with the loss of a paw. t These were the last beaver taken in this 
county. About twenty-five years ago a single beaver appeared in 



173 

the Tioga, and even showed his nose on the farm of the old 
trapper. He was a traveller. He visited various parts of the 
river, as agent perhaps for some discontented colony on another 
stream, but probably discouraged by the farms and saw-mills, left 
the upper waters and appeared next in the lower Chemung. He 
imprudently went upon an island of a snowy morning ; Canisteo 
raftmen tracked him to a corn-stout, beset, slew and skinned him 
and delivered his hide to the hatters. The streams, though 
depopulated of beaver, abounded with fish, and contained for 
many years fine shad and salmon. 

Rattlesnakes will conclude this catalogue of worthies. It has 
been previously intimated that these deadly reptiles flourished in 
certain places in large tribes. To say that there were thousands 
of them in the Conhocton valley among the pines, would be to 
speak modestly. The incident related of Patterson, the hunter, 
in a previous chapter of this volume, is sometimes told in a differ- 
ent form. It is told on excellent authority, that he and his dog 
were going down the river trail, and killed rattlesnakes by day- 
light, till the odor of them made him sick, and till his dog, which 
was an expert snake-fighter, refused to touch them any more — 
(an active dog will dance around a snake, dash suddenly in, 
snatch it up in his teeth, and shake it to death.) — It then becom- 
ing dark, he took the river and waded two miles to its mouth. 
There is another story touching snakes, which history will not 
willingly let die. The hero of the tale, it may be premised, was 
the narrator of it, and the sole witness to the facts. An old set- 
tler of this country was once journeying through the woods, and 
when night came, found himself in a district infested by rattle- 
snakes, numbers of which were twisting their tails in the bushes in 
great indignation. Fearful that if he lay on the ground he would 
wake up in the morning with his pockets full of snakes, (for they 
are extremely free to snug up to sleepers on chilly nights, to enjoy 
the warmth of the human body,) in which case, it would be a 
delicate thing to pull them out, he placed a pole across two crotched 
stakes, and slept on the pole. His slumbers were sound and 
refreshing. In the morning he found himself on his roost with 
no serpents in his pockets, his boots, his hat, or his hair, and 



174 

observed, moreover, that, during his sleep, he had unconsciously 
turned over from his right side to his left. 

So much for rattlesnakes. Concerning other kinds of serpents 
— black snakes, racers, and the like of which there was no lack 
in this bailiwick, we have nothing to offer — not from disrespect, 
but from ignorance. 

The chase, as we have seen, was not often attended with peril ; 
yet there were times when the hunter was obliged to move briskly 
for his life. The wounded panther was a dangerous enemy. 
Men have been killed by them. A noted Canisteo hunter once 
hurt one of these animals with a rifle ball, and it sprang upon 
his dog as the first adversary it met. Knowing that himself 
would be the next victim, the hunter closed with the ferocious 
beast and killed it with his knife. As it lay upon the ground 
after the fight, eight feet or more in length, it looked like a lion, 
and the hunter was astonished at his boldness. 

A Justice of the Peace in one of the outer towns had once 
occasion for a little practice, not provided for in the "Magistrate's 
Manual." Relieving his judicial cares by the pleasures of the 
chase, he one day met a great panther which he severely wounded, 
but did not immediately cripple it. The monster, enraged at the 
tort, attacked him furiously. The plaintiff in the case found 
himself unexpectedly made defendant. The books suggested no 
proceeding for relief in such a strange turn of affairs, and he was 
obliged to fall back on first principles. He dealt a rousing blow 
with his gun, and then dexterously seized the panther's tail. 
A novel action ensued, which was neither trover nor replevin. 
The plaintiff, though partially disabled, had yet so much of his 
former enormous strength, that, when he turned with a savage 
growl to bite the defendant, the latter, by jerking with all his 
might, baffled the manoeuvre of his antagonist. This odd contest, 
worthy of record in the " Crockett Almanac, ' ' lasted a good while — 
jerking this way, jerking that way, rejoinder and sur-rejoinder, 
rebutter and sur-rebutter — till at length the panther became so 
weak from loss of blood, that the guardian of the people's peace 
could work the ropes with one hand ; when resuming his position 
as a plaintiff, he speedily entered up final judgment against the 
defendant with a hunting knife, and seized his scalp for costs. 



i75 

This is a true story, (as also are all other stories in this book) and 
can be proved by a Supervisor, a Justice of the Peace, and a Town 
Clerk. 

A Canisteo hunter was once watching a deer lick at night. A 
large tree had partially fallen near the spring, and he seated him- 
self in its branches several feet above the ground. No deer came 
down to drink. Towards midnight the tree was shaken by the 
tread of a visitor. It was a huge panther, which slowly walked 
up the trunk and sat down on its haunches within a very few 
yards of the hunter. The night was clear and the moon was 
shining, but the uneasy deerslayer could not see the forward 
sight of his gun, and did not like to attempt the delicate feat of 
sending a bullet to the heart of such a lion so decisively that 
there would be no snarling or tearing of his throat afterwards. 
All night long they sat in mutual contemplation, the hunter 
watching with ready rifle every movement of his guest ; while the 
latter, sitting with the gravity of a chancellor, hardly stirred till 
day -break. As soon as the light of morning brought the forward 
sight in view the rifle cracked and the panther departed life with- 
out a growl. 

Wolves seldom or never were provoked to resistance. The 
settler walking through the woods at dusk, was sometimes inter- 
cepted by a gang of these bush-pirates, whom hunger and the 
darkness emboldened to snarl and snap their teeth at his very 
heels ; but a stone or a " chunk of wood " hurled at their heads 
was enough to make them bristle up and stand on the defensive. 
They were generally held in supreme contempt. We hear of a 
bouncing damsel in one of the settlements who attacked half a 
dozen of them with a whip, just as they had seized a pig and put 
them to flight, too late, however, to save the life of the unhappy 
porker. 

The buck, under certain circumstances, was a dangerous an- 
tagonist. The following incident is given in a manuscript here- 
tofore alluded to : " An individual who eventually became a 
leading man in the county and a member of Congress, once shot 
a buck near Bath. He loaded his gun and walked up to the 
fallen deer which was only stunned, the ball having hit one of 
his horns. When within a few steps of it, the deer sprang up 



176 

and rushed at him. He fired again, but in the hurry of the 
moment missed his aim. He then clubbed his gun and struck at 
the head of the infuriated animal, but it dexterously parried the 
blow with its horns and knocked the rifle out of the hunter's 
hand to the distance of several yards. The hunter took refuge 
behind a tree, around which the deer followed him more than an 
hour, lunging at him with his horns so rapidly that the gentle- 
man who ' ' eventually went to Congress ' ' could not always 
dodge the blow, but was scratched by the tips of the antlers and 
badly bruised on his back and legs, and had almost all his clothes 
torn off. He struck the deer with his knife several times inde- 
cisively, but when almost tired out managed to stab him fairly 
just back of the shoulder. The enemy hauled off to repair 
damages but soon fell dead. The hunter threw himself upon the 
gronnd utterly exhausted, and lay several hours before he had 
strength to go home. A man thus assailed was said to be " treed 
by a buck." 

THE PLUMPING MILL. 

There are few tribulations of the new country about which old 
settlers are more eloquent than those connected with ' ' going to 
mill." Grist mills being fabrics of civilization, were not of 
course found in a wild state along the primitive rivers. The 
unfortunate savage cracked his corn with a pestle and troubled 
his head not at all about bulkheads and tail races, and, although 
his meal was in consequence of a very indifferent quality, yet it 
may be a question if this was not compensated for by the free- 
dom of the courts of the Six Nations from those thrilling contro- 
versies about flush-boards, and drowned meadows, and backwater 
on the wheel, which do in modern times confound the two and 
thirty Circuit Judges of the Long House. 

In 1778, a grist-mill and saw-mill belonging to the Indians and 
Tories, at their settlement of Unadilla, the only mills in the Sus- 
quehanna valley in this State, were burned by a party of rangers 
and riflemen. In 1790, four mills are noted on the map of Phelps 
and Gorham's Purchase, one in T. 8, R. 3; one in T. 10, R. 4; 
one at the Friend's Settlement near Penn Yan ; one in Lindley 
town on the Tioga. Shepard's mill on the Susquehanna, a short 



i 7 7 

distance above Tioga Point, was the main dependence of our set- 
tlers till they built mills for themselves. The people of Painted 
Post and Canisteo took their grain down to that mill for several 
years. 

There was, however, one truly patriarchal engine which 
answered the purpose of the grist-mill in times of necessity which 
it would be ungrateful not to remember. That backwoods 
machine known as the Plumping Mill, the Hominy Block, the 
Samp Mortar, or the Corn Cracker, is now as obsolete an engine 
as the catapult or the spinning-wheel. The gigantic red castles 
that bestride our streams rumbling mightily with their wheels 
and rollers, while their mill-stones whirling day and night, crush 
the grains of a thousand hills, are structures entirely too mag- 
nificent to be mentioned with a homely plumping-mill. Never- 
theless, granting all due deference to these portly and respectable 
edifices, historians will insist that their rustic predecessors be re- 
membered with some degree of kindness. 

The Plumping Mill was made after this wise. From the outer 
edge of the top of a pine stump, and at a little distance within 
the extreme edge, so as to leave a rim of about half an inch in 
breadth, augur holes were bored toward the centre of the stump 
pointing downward so as to meet in a point several inches below 
the surface. Fire was placed on the top of the stump, which, 
when it had eaten down to the augur holes, was sucked according 
to atmospherical laws, through those little mines and burned out 
the chip or conical block nicely, leaving a large deep bowl. This 
was scraped and polished with an iron and the mill was ready for 
the engine. The engine was a very simple one of about two feet 
stroke. From a crotched post a long sweep was balanced like 
the swale of an old-fashioned well. A pole, at the end of which 
was a pounder, was hung from the sweep, and your mill was 
made. The backwoodsman poured his corn into the bowl of the 
stump, and working the piston like one churning, cracked his 
corn triumphantly. Modern mills, with all their gorgeous red 
paint and puzzling machinery, are uncertain affairs at best — 
nervous as it were and whimsical, disturbed by droughts and 
freshets, by rains and high winds like rheumatic old gentlemen : 
there is always a screw loose somewhere, arM their wheels need 



i 7 8 

" fixing " almost as often as the " wheels of government." But 
the sturdy old Plumping Mill was subject to no such whimsies, 
no more than the men of the frontiers were to dyspepsia, or the 
women to hysterics and tantrums. 

The reflecting citizen will duly honor the old Plumping Mill. 
It is the pioneer engine. It can even now be heard thumping on 
the edge of the Far West, thumping on the outer edge of the 
Canadas, and so will go, stoutly thumping its way across the 
Rocky Mountains to the Pacific. 

INCIDENTS OF THE WAR OF l8l2. 

At the commencement of the War of 1812, the standing army 
of our country was a much more respectable corps than it is at the 
present day. Either from modern degeneracy or from our superior 
enlightenment, the appearance of a phalanx of militia in any pub- 
lic place in this noon of the nineteenth century, is a signal for 
universal laughter. Forty years ago it was not so- Then the 
army of Napoleon could not have been much more an object of 
respect to itself than the rustic regiment which paraded yearly in 
each important village of Western New York. There were many 
independent companies of horse, rifles and artillery. The officers 
took pride in the appearance of their men, and the men, instead 
of indulging in all manner of antics, were disposed to keep their 
toes pointed at a proper angle, and to hold their guns with the 
gravity of Macedonians. The militia was respected, and men of 
reflection beheld in it a great bulwark to defend the republic 
against the demonstrations of the Five Great Powers, and other 
monarchical phantoms which hovered before the eyes of our vig- 
ilant forefathers. The plume, the epaulette, the sash, were 
badges of honor. To be an officer in the militia was an object 
sought for by respectable men. The captain was a man of more 
consequence than he would have been without the right to com- 
mand forty of his neighbors to ground arms, and to keep their 
eyes right. It was a great addition to the importance of a leading 
citizen that he was a colonel, and enjoyed the right of riding upon 
a charger at the head of half the able-bodied men of the county ; 
and the general galloping with his staff from county to county, 



179 

dining with the officers of each regiment, and saluted by the 
drums and rifles of five thousand republicans, was a Bernadotte, a 
Wellington ; and, if a man of tact and vigor, carried an important 
political influence. 

The social constitution of this domestic army was, of course, a 
different thing from that of the armies of the European Marshals. 
Captains went to logging bees and raisings with their rank and 
file, perhaps ground their'corn, possibly shod their horses. Colo- 
nels and generals drew the wills of their legionaries, or defended 
them in actions of assault and battery and ejectment in the courts, 
or employed them on their arks, or bought their cattle. They 
were dependent upon the men they commanded for elections as 
Sheriffs or Congressmen. The inferior officers might be hailed by 
their myrmidons as Tom or Harry, and, though the high com- 
manders were generally men of more stately character, who were 
not to be treated exactly with such familiarity, yet their relations 
with the soldiers were not those of Austrian Princes with their 
drilled boors- When, therefore, one of these high field-officers 
went forth to war, and indiscreetly put on the majesty of Marl- 
borough, or affected to look upon his men as the Duke of York 
looked upon his, he soon found that the social laws of a European 
army were not to be applied to an army of such composition with- 
out modification. There was occasionally one of these magnifi- 
cent commanders who, after the war, suffered the consequences of 
his exaltation, and even was in danger of being handsomely 
thrashed by some indignant corporal, who, at home, was the 
equal of his commander, but found himself treated very loftily 
when his former comrade commanded a corps upon the line, and 
snuffed the battle afar off. 

The officer was expected to deal liberally with the infirmities of 
his men, and, as one of the popular infirmities in those times was 
a singular relish for stimulants, the epidemic was treated after the 
most approved practice of the ancients. The colonel often knocked 
in the head of a barrel of whiskey ; the general, sometimes after 
review, dashed open his two or three barrels of the same delightful 
fluid, and the whole legion crowding around quenched their 
thirsts at these inspiring fountains ; majors, captains and adju- 
tants, were held responsible for " small drinks," that the fatigues 



i8o 

of the day might be endured with greater patriotism. There was, 
according to the best information we obtain, one regiment in the 
county at the breaking out of the war. On review day the militia 
from all parts of the county met at Bath. 

Three companies of Steuben County militia were ordered out 
for three months' service on the lines in the year 1812, two being 
independent companies of riflemen, and liable, as such, to be 
called at pleasure by the government, and the third being a com- 
pany drafted from the regiment. Many who were disposed to 
volunteer, had been carried off by the recruiting officers of the 
regular service. Captain James Sandford commanded one of the 
rifle companies, which belonged chiefly to the town of Wayne, 
and the other, which mustered about 50 men, belonged to the 
town of Urbana, and was commanded by Capt Abraham Brun- 
dage. William White, of Pulteney, was his first lieutenant, and 
Stephen Garner his ensign. Two rifle companies from Allegany 
County were attached to these, and the battalion thus formed was 
commanded by Major Asa Gaylord, of Urbana. Major Gaylord 
died on the lines. After his death, the battalion was commanded 
by Col. Dobbins. The drafted company was composed of every 
eighth man of the regiment. Capt. Jonas Cleland of Conhocton, 
commanded. Samuel D. Wells, of Conhocton, and John Gillet 
were lieutenants, and John Kennedy, ensign. 

These companies reached the frontiers just at the time when 
Col. Van Rensselaer, with an army of militia, was about to make 
an attack on the works and forces of the British at Queenstown 
Heights. Capt. Cleland, with many of his men, volunteered to 
cross the boundary. 

As to the movements of the Steuben County militia on that 
day, there are discrepancies in the accounts of the actors. We 
give the story of the ensign, afterwards Major Kennedy, Sheriff of 
the county, a reliable man, and brave soldier, and obtained from 
him as related to our informant many years ago. 

The men of the company, being ranged on the shore of the 
Niagara river at the foot of the precipitous bank, were fired upon 
by the British batteries on the opposite side. The grape shot rattled 
furiously against the rocks overhead. The captain advised his 
men to seek a less exposed position, and disappeared with some 



181 

of his soldiers. He appeared again on the field of battle, over the 
river, in the course of the forenoon, and complaining of illness 
returned to the American side. Lieutenant Gillett and Kennedy- 
remained under the fire of the British batteries with most of the 
men, crossed the river, and went into the battle. The former was 
well known through the county as "Chief Justice Gillett," an 
eccentric oratorical man, a Justice of the Peace sometime, and a 
practitioner in the popular courts. Upon him devolved the com- 
mand of the company. It was doubted byj some whether this 
Cicero would make a very good figure upon the battle field, and 
whether his chivalrous flourishes and heroic fury would not sud- 
denly fail him at the scent of gunpowder. What was the surprise 
of the men when the " Chief Justice, " as soon as he snuffed the 
British sulphur, rushed into the fight as if he had just found his 
element, whirled his sword, bellowed savagely with his coarse, 
powerful voice, urged on the men, cheered and dashed at the 
Britons like a lion. The soldiers were astonished to find them- 
selves led by such a chevalier. Even after receiving a dangerous 
and almost mortal wound, he faltered not, but swung his hat, 
brandished his sword, and continued his outlandish uproar till he 
fell from pain and exhaustion.* 

Ensign Kennedy, after the fall of the lieutenant, took command 
of that part of Capt. Cleland's company, which crossed the river, 
and of a few others, hastily formed into a company. At one time 
they were opposed to the Indians, whom they drove before them 

* Old soldiers tell of a militia captain from a neighboring county, who was 
engaged in the same battle, and was in some respects a match for the fight- 
ing Chief Justice. He was a physician by profession — a dissenter from the 
establishment, however, never having taken a degre — and accustomed to 
garnish his conversation with the most sonorous language. In battle, he 
made good his words, and fought bravely. He went into the fight in full 
uniform, adorning himself with great care, and from this circumstance became 
a mark for the Indians, who supposed that such a blaze of finery must cover 
at least a Major General. He was last seen by his men engaged in single 
combat with an Indian, slashing manfully with his sword, while the savage 
danced around him with a hatchet, watching a chance to strike. The next 
day the Indian made his appearance before the prisoners, clad in the gor- 
geous raiment of the captain. He strutted to and fro with great self-admir- 
ation, and was not entirely sure that he had not slain the President of the 
United States. 



182 

into a wood. While exchanging an irregular fire with these en- 
emies among the trees, Benjamin Welles, a young man from Bath, 
who stood beside Kennedy, looking over a fence, was shot through 
the head and mortally wounded. At the final engagement in this 
random, but often gallantly-fought battle, Kennedy, with his 
men, were ranged in the line formed to meet the British reinforce- 
ments, which were just coming up. " Bill Wadsworth," as their 
general was known to the militia, (upon whom the command 
devolved after the fall of Van Rensselaer,) went through their 
lines, in a rough-and-ready style, with hat and coat off, explain- 
ing to the inexperienced officers his plan. To avoid the fire of 
the British the men were ordered to retire below the brow of the 
hill upon which they were ranged, and up which the enemy would 
march. When the British appeared on the top of the hill the 
militia were to fire from below. The slaughter would be great ; 
they were then to charge bayonets, and in the confusion might be 
successful, though the decisiveness of a charge of bayonets up a 
hill against veterans, by militia, who before that day had never 
been under fire, might well have been doubted. The first part of 
the plan succeeded famously. As the British appeared above the 
hill a fire was delivered which was very destructive ; but a misap- 
prehension of the word of command by part of the line caused 
disorder. The fire was returned by the enemy. The militia suf- 
fered a considerable loss, and fell back overpowered to the river, 
where the most of them were made prisoners. Of the Steuben 
County men two were killed and three wounded. 

It is popularly told, that on this day Ensign Kennedy was 
engaged in personal combat with a British officer, and being unac- 
quainted with the polite learning of his newly-adopted profession, 
was speedily disarmed ; that he immediately closed with his con- 
founded antagonist, knocked him down with his fist, and made him 
prisoner. The hero of the story, however, is said to have denied 
it. He was present at other engagements, and gained the reputa- 
tion of a cool and resolute officer. At the sortie of Fort Erie he 
served with distinction. It was here that, under a close and heavy 
fire, he paced to and fro by the heads of his men, who had been 
ordered to lie fiat on the ground to avoid the balls — not for a vain 
exposure of his person, but "being an officer," he thought" it 



i83 

wouldn't do." In the second year of the war two companies 
were drafted from the Steuben County militia, and sent to the Niag- 
are frontier, under the command of Captains James Read, of Urbana, 
and Jonathan Rowley, of Dansville, faithful and reliable officers. 
Captain Read refused to go as a drafted officer, but 
reported himself to General of the Division, at the commence- 
ment of the war, as ready to march at the head of a company, as 
a volunteer, whenever he should be called upon. Both the com- 
panies were principally levied from the Northern part of the 
county. Of Capt. Rowley's company, John Short and John E. 
Mulholland were lieutenants, and George Knouse and Timothy 
Goodrich, ensigns. Of Capt. Read's company, George Teeplesand 
Anthony Swarthout were lieutenants, and Jabez Hopkins and O. 
Cook, ensigns. From muster to discharge these companies served 
about four months. All of the officers and most of the men vol- 
unteered to cross the boundaries of the republic, and were stationed 
at Fort George. 

We have not succeeded in learning anything about the draft 
for the last year of the war, if any was made, nor concerning the 
militia of this county who were engaged at Fort Erie. 

The following incident is related by one of the Steuben County 
militia who was engaged in one of the battles on the line as 
sergeant of a company. His company was ordered into action, 
and before long found itself confronted by a rank of Old Penin- 
sulars, arrayed in all the terrors of scarlet coats and cartridge 
boxes. When within a distance of ten rods from their enemies, 
the militia halted, and were ordered to fire. Muskets came 
instantly to the shoulder and were pointed at the Britons with the 
deadly aim of rifles at a wolf hunt, but to the dismay of the sol- 
diers there was a universal " flash in the pan " — not a gun went 
off. The sergeant knew in an instant what was the cause of the 
failure. The muskets had been stacked out of doors during the 
night, and a little shower which fell toward morning had thor- 
oughly soaked the powder in them. It was his business to have 
seen to it, that the muskets were cared for, and upon him after- 
wards fell the blame of the disaster. Nothing could be done till 
the charges were drawn. There were but two ball-screws in the 
company. The captain took one, and the sergeant the other, 



1 84 

and beginning their labors in the middle of the rank, worked 
towards the ends. A more uncomfortable position for untried 
militia can hardly be imagined. The men, as described by the 
sergeant, " looked strangely, as he had never seen them before." 
The British brought their muskets with disagreeable precision 
into position and fired. The bullets whistled over the heads of the 
militia. The British loaded their guns again : again the fright- 
ful row of muzzles looked the militia-men in the face — again they 
heard the alarming command, fire, and again two score bullets 
whistled over their heads. A third time the British brought 
their muskets to the ground and went through all the terrible 
ceremonies of biting cartridges, drawing ramrods, and priming in 
full view of the uneasy militia. The moistened charges were by 
this time almost drawn, and when the enemy were about to fire 
the sergeant stood beside the last man. He was pale and ex- 
cited. " Be quick sergeant — be quick for God's sake ! " he said. 
They could hear the British officer saying to his men, "You 
fire over their heads," and instructing them to aim lower. The 
muzzles this time dropped a little below the former range ; smoke 
burst forth from them, and seven militia-men fell dead and 
wounded. The sergeant had just finished his ill-timed job, and 
was handing the musket to the private beside him, when a bullet 
struck the unfortunate man between the eyes and killed him. 
The fire of the British was now returned with effect. Reinforce- 
ments came on the field and the engagement became hot. An 
officer on horseback was very active in arranging the enemy's 
line — riding to and fro, giving loud orders, and making himself 
extremely useful. " Mark that fellow ! ' ' said the sergeant to his 
right hand man. Both fired at the same instant. The officer fell 
from his horse and was carried off the field by his men. They 
afterwards learned that he was a Colonel, and that one of his legs 
was broken. 

THE BATTLE OF DANSVILLE. 

In the midwinter of 1 8 14, the bareheaded express-rider, gallop- 
ing through the frozen forests, brings startling tidings. The 
British Lion, bounding forth from the snow-drifts of Canada, 
with icicles glittering in his mane, has pounced upon the frontiers 



i8 5 

of the Republic. Black Rock is taken ! Buffalo is burned ! 
General Hall's militia have been captured and generally eaten. 
The supervisors of Niagara County have been thrown into the 
grand whirlpool. The floodgates of invasion have been opened, 
and the whole standing army of Great Britain, with several line- 
of-battle ships, and an irregular horde of Canadians and Esqui- 
maux, is now rolling Eastward with fire-brands and artillery, 
breaking furniture, shattering flour-barrels, burning cabins, blow- 
ing up mills, and terrifying the wives and children of our fellow- 
citizens. 

Since Col. Simcoe, brandishing his two-edged sword on the 
ramparts of Toronto, beckoned those " black war-elephants " out 
of the billows of Ontario, there had not been such a martial 
ferment in our county, as arose at this alarming intelligence. 
Before the horse tail of the express-rider vanished beyond the 
Chimney Narrows, the murmur of war arose from the valleys like 
the humming in a disturbed bee-hive. The Brigadier blew his 
gathering horn, and all the cavaliers and yeomen, in the utter- 
most corners of the county, hurried to their regimental mustering 
grounds. A draft was ordered of every second man. 

One battalion mustered on the Pulteney Square, at Bath. The 
snow was deep and the wind keen, but the soldiers stood formed 
in a half-moon, with the fortitude of Siberians. Col. Haight, 
mounted upon a black charger, rode up with great circumstance, 
and made a vigorous and patriotic speech, calling for volunteers, 
and exhorting every man to go forth to the battle. If half the 
corps volunteered, a draft would not be necessary. Nearly the 
requisite number offered themselves at once. Then the deluding 
drum and the fanciful fife began to utter the most seducing mel- 
odies. The musicians again and again made the circuit of the 
regiment, as if surrounding the backward warriors with some 
enchantment. Drummers pounded with marvelous energy, and 
the fifers blew into their squealing tubes with such extraordinary 
ardor, that if the safety of the republic had depended upon the 
active circulation of wind through those " ear-piercing " instru- 
ments, all apprehensions of danger from the invaders might have 
been instantly dismissed. Occasionally a militia-man broke from 
the line and fell in behind the musicians ; but the most of the 






1 86 

legionaries who had resisted the first appeal, stood in the snow, 
proof against drums, fifes, and the Colonel's rhetoric. The draft 
to complete the corps was finally made, and the battalion started 
for the seat of war in high spirits. A great rabble followed their 
enlisted comrades to Dansville in sleighs. A very uproarious 
column it was. At Conhocton the arm}- encamped. Houses, 
barns, pens and haystacks, overflowed with fire-eaters. 

In the meantime the Canisteo country had been wide awake. 
Col. James McBurney, hearing the Brigadiers alarming horn sound- 
ing its portentous quavers afar off, mounted his snorting war. steed, 
and gathering together his boisterous myrmidons from the saw- 
mills and gorges, set forth in hot haste.* At Dansville, the two 
battalions met and united. Their descent from the forests of 
Steuben was like an irruption of the goths of old. The chieftain 
of Canisteo opened the battle after the ancient fashion, by a single 
combat in the presence of the combined battalions. A broad- 
breasted barrel of whiskey stood forth in its wooden mail, made 
thrice secure by hoops of seasoned hickory. This grim foe the 
undaunted Ostrogoth assailed with an axe, and, at the first blow, 
beat open his head. The barbarians set up a howl of triumph, and, 
crowding around, drank like the Scandinavians out of the skull of 
their vanquished enemy. The battle then became general. 
Streets and bar-rooms resounded with tremendous uproar. Dans- 
ville was captured, and her citizens knew no peace till the invaders 
sank down, from exhaustion, to dream that they had just fought a 
great battle on the Genesee Meadows, in which the British fled 
before them, scampered toward Canada like a multitude of rats, 
ran into the Niagara, and were now sailing around in the great 
whirlpool — cannon and horses, officers, non-commissioned officers, 
musicians and privates — while the Prince Regent, according to the 
sentence of a drum-head Court Martial, was hanging by his heels 
from an oak tree, and the lion and unicorn, yoked like bullocks to 
the triumphal car of Colonel Haight, were dragging that victorious 
consul around the Pulteney Square of Bath. 

News arrived that the invaders had retired into Canada. The 
drafted battalions were discharged and returned again to their 

*Col. Wm. Stephens, of Canisteo, was his Major, and Col. J. R. Stephens, 
of Hornellsville, Adjutant. 



i8 7 

homes. The Canisteo Alaric covered the retreat in a masterly 
manner, and saw to it that none of the Steuben County fire-eaters 
who had been put hors die combat by the enemy were left to the 
tender mercies of the Dansvillians. Certain young men who were 
entirely captivated by the free and vociferous spirit of the Canis- 
teo and followed the Goths of Col. McBurney to their own valley, 
relate at the present day with laughter the adventures of the re- 
treat, and talk of the life and hospitalities of the valley with great 
satisfaction . 

The muster, the march, the carouse, and the retreat were the 
prominent features of this campaign, of which Tirnour the Tartar 
might be proud. It was known to the soldiery afterwards as the 
4 ' Battle of Dansville. ' ' 

THE END. 



APPENDIX. 



ORGANIZATION OF STEUBEN COUNTY. 

The County of Steuben was detached from the old County of Ontario and 
constituted a separate County in the year 1796. At the time of its organiza- 
tion it was divided into six towns, viz : Bath, Canisteo, Dansville, Frederic- 
ton, Middletown and Painted Post. Since the organization, one tier of towns 
has been taken from the western side of the County and attached to Allegany 
County, the territory constituting the present town of Barrington and 
Starkey with part of the town of Jerusalem has been taken from the northern 
towns and annexed to Yates County, and one quarter of a Township, includ- 
ing the village of Dansville, has been given to Livingston. 



COUNTY JUDGES. 

William Kersey, appointed 1796 1 George C. Edwards, appointed 1826 

James Faulkner, " 1804 j Ziba A. Leland, " 1838 

Samuel Baker, " 1814 Jacob Larrowe, " 1843 

Thomas McBurney, " 1816 William M. Hawley, " 1846 

James Norton, 1823 David McMaster, elected 1847 

Jacob Larrowe, elected 185 1. 



George D. Cooper, 
Henry A. Townsend, 
John Wilson, 
Edward Howell, 
John Metcalfe, 



COUNTY CLERKS. 

1796 I David Rumsey, 
1799 William H. Bull, 
18 15 William Hamilton, 
1818 I Paul C. Cook, 
182 1 ! Philo P. Hubbell, 



1829 
1832 
1838 
1844 
1850 



SHERIFFS. 



William Dunn, appointed 


1796 


John Magee, elected 1822 


John Wilson, " 


1800 


John Kennedy, " 


1825 


Dugald Camoron, " 


1805 


Alvah Ellas, 


1S28 


Jacob Teeple, " 


1809 


George Huntington, " 


1831 


Howell Bull, 


1811 


John T. Andrews, " 


1834 


Thomas McBurney, " 


1812 


Henry Brother, ' ' 


1837 


Lazarus Hammond, " 


1814 


Hiram Potter, " 


1840 


George McClure, " 


1816 


Hugh Magee, " 


1843 


Henry Shriver, " 


1819 


Henry Brother, " 


1846 


Tohn Magee, 


1821 


Oliver Allen, " 


1849 



Gabriel T. Harrower, elected 1852. 



Stephen Ross, appointed 
Henry A. Townsend, " 
George McClure, " 
John Metcalfe, " 

James Brundage 



SURROGATES. 

1796 William Woods, appointed 1827 

1800 Robert Campbell, Jr.," 1835 

1805 David Rumsey, Jr., " 1840 

1813 Ansel J. McCall " 1844 

David McMaster, elected 1847 



Jacob Larrowe, elected 185 1. 



Population in 1790 
" " 1800 

«« " 1810 



POPULATION OF STEUBEN COUNTY. 

168 Population in 1820 21,989 

I t738 " " 1830 33,975 

7,246 , " " 1840 46,138 

Population in 1850 62,969. 



POPULATION ACCORDING TO THE CENSUS OF 1850. 



FIRST ASSEMBLY DISTRICT. 



Bath, 
Reading, 
Tyrone, 
Prattsburgh, 



Bradford, 

Caton, 

Campbell, 

Cameron, 

Erwin, 

Hornby, 



Avoca, 

Conhocton, 

Dansville, 

Howard, 

Hornellsville, 

Hartsville, 



6185 


Pulteney, 


1435 


Wheeler, 


1894 


Urbana, 


2786 1 Wayne, 


SECOND ASSEMBLY DISTRICT. 


20IO 


Lindley, 


1215 


Orange 


"75 


Painted Post, 


1663 


Addison, 


1477 


Woodhull, 


13 1 4 ; Thurston, 


THIRD ASSEMBLY DISTRICT. 


1574 


Troupsburgh, 


2006 


Greenwood, 


2545 


West Union, 


3144 


Jasper, 


2637 


Canisteo, 


854 


Wayland, 



i8r 5 
1471 
2079 
1350 



686 
1887 
441 1 
3723 
1769 

726 



1656 

1 186 

95o 

1749 
2030 
2067 



VOTES POLLED AT THE GENERAL ELECTION IN 1852. 



For 
Franklin Pierce, 



For 
6880 1 Winfield Scott, 



5236 



AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION, ETC. 

Acres of Land improved 336,981 

" " unimproved 338,415 

Cash value of farms $13,581,268 

Value of farming implements and machinery $ 676,792 



190 

MVE STOCK. 

Horses 12,744 

Asses and mules 4 

Milch cows 21,584 

Working oxen 6,744 

Other cattle , 27,162 

Sheep .. 156,776 

Swine 23,939 

Value of live stock $ 2,155,090 

PRODUCE DURING YEAR ENDING JUNE I, 1850. 

Wheat, bushels of. 653,484 

Rye, " " 16,033 

Indian corn, " ..297,717 

Oats, " " 913,948 

Wool, pounds of 399,543 

Peas and beans, bushels of. 45,202 

Irish potatoes, bushels of 360 725 

Sweet potatoes, " " 245 

Barley, " " I53.°56 

Buckwheat, " " x i5.390 

Value of orchard products $ 30,565 

Wine, gallons of 285 

Value of produce of market gardens $ 3, 740 

Butter, pounds of « 1,918,465 

Cheese, pounds of 210,889 

Hay, tons of 111,869 

Clover seed, bushels of. 1,386 

Other grass seeds 4,479 

Hops, lbs. of 424 

Flax, lbs. of 16,241 

Flax seed, bushels of. 1,276 

Silk cocoons, lbs. of 2 

Maple sugar, lbs, of 294,897 

Molassses, gallons of. 3,547 

Beeswax and honey, lbs. of. 94,99 T 

Value of home-made manufactures $ 76,287 

Value of animals slaughtered $296,798 



SKETCH OF THE GENERAL HISTORY OF SETTLEMENT IN 
WESTERN NEW-YORK. 

The first European visitants of Western New York were the French. Dur- 
ing the first thirty years of the seventeenth century the English made their 
earliest settlements in New England and Virginia, the Dutch on the Hudson 
River, and the French on the St. Lawrence. One hundred and fifty years 
afterwards the English were lords of the Continent. At the beginning of 
the race, however, the French displayed a more daring genius for adventure 
and conquest than their competitors. While the English Colonists were yet 
doubtfully struggling for existence on the Atlantic shores, and the Holland- 
ers, with beaver-like prudence strengthened their habitations at Fort Orange 



191 

and New Amsterdam, French adventurers had ascended the Great Lakes, and 
before the end of the seventeenth century, crossed thence to the Mississippi, 
descended that river to its mouth, and established trading posts and missions 
half way across the continent.* 

During the first century of French dominion in Canada, their relations 
with the fierce proprietor of Western New York were not peaceful. Cham- 
plain, the founder of Quebec, soon after his advent to Canada, gave mortal 
offence to the Five Nations, by assisting their enemies, the Hurons and Algon- 
quins in a battle near Ticonderoga, where the fire-arms of the Europeans 
gained for their confederates victory over the Iroquois. From that time 
down to the beginning of the eighteenth century, the implacable enmity of 
the red leaguers harassed the colonists of Canada. The expeditions of the 
French Governors into the territory of their foes gained for them little beside 
disgrace. From about the year 1700, however, the influence of the Jesuit 
missionaries, and the prudence of the Governors preserved peace between 
the former beligerents, and neutrality on the part of the savages in the con- 
tests of France and Great Britain. When the great rivals joined in the final 
struggle of 1754, the four Western tribes of the Six Nationsf even took up 
the hatchet for the French. Ten years later the English were supreme in 
North America. 

In 1771 the county of Albany embraced all the northern and western part 
of the province of New York, and extended from the Hudson river to the 
Niagara. In 1772 the county of Tryon was formed. It embraced all that 
part of the state lying west of a North and South line running nearly through 
the centre of the present county of Schoharie. It was named in honor of 
Sir William Tryon, the provincial governor. The boundary between the 
British and Indian territory as agreed upon in the treaty of 1768, ran from 
Fort Stanwix, near Oneida Creek, southward to the Susquehanna and Dela- 
ware. 

The settlement of this district was commenced early in the 18th century, 
when nearly three thousand German Palatinates emigrated to this country 
under patronage of Queen Anne. Most of them settled in Pennsylvania ; a 
few made their way in 1773 from Albany over the Helderberg to the bottom 
lands of Schoharie creek and there effected a settlement. Small colonies 
from here and from Albany established themselves in various places along the 
Mohawk, and in 1772 had extended as far up as the Germau Flats, near 
where stands the village of Herkimer. 

In 1739, Mr. John Lindsay, a Scotch gentleman, founded the settlement at 

* Date of Cartier's Voyage to Hochalaga (Montreal ) 1534 

" " Settlement at Quebec, 1608 

" " " " Plymouth, 1620 

" " " " New York, 1613 

" " " Jamestown, 1607 

" " Marquette's Voyage down the Mississippi, 1673 

" " La Salle's Western Explorations, 1682 

fThe Tuscaroras joined the Five Nations in 1712. 



192 

Cherry Valley, which in a few years became the home of a most worthy and 
intelligent community, mostly of Scotch and " Scotch-Irish" origin. 

The gallant family of Harpers settled at Harpersfield in 1768, and about 
the same time settlements were planted near Unadilla, and scattered families 
took up their residence in other districts. The population of Cherry Valley 
was short of three hundred, and that of all Tryou county not far from ten 
thousand inhabitants when the Revolution opened. 

For twenty years previous to the Revolutionary war, Sir William Johnson 
lived at Johnstown, the capital of Tryon county, by far the most no able 
man bearing a British commission in the American provinces. Emigrating 
from Ireland in the year 1737, as agent for the Mohawk estate of his uncle, 
Sir Peter Warren, he early obtained distinguished reputation and influence 
— rose to high military command, and in the last French war, by his victory 
over Baron Dieskau, at Lake George, and his successful seige of Fort Niag- 
ara, gained fame, fortune, and a Baronetcy. From that time till near the 
rupture between the Crown and the Colonies, he lived at Johnson Hall, near 
Johnstown, Superintendent of Indian affairs for the Northern provinces, 
with princely wealth and power, displaying an administrative genius super- 
ior to any which had before been at the service of the British government in 
America. In the year 1774 an Indian Council was held at Johnstown, at 
which were present a large number of the warriors of the Six Nations, besides 
many civil dignitaries of the provinces of New York and New Jersey. In 
the midst of the council Sir William suddenly died. On the 13th of July 
he was borne from the Hall to his grave, followed by a great concourse of citi- 
zens and Indians, and lamented by all. 

At the time of his decease, his department included 130,000 Indians, of 
whom 25,420 were righting men. The Six Nations numbered about 10.000 
and had two thousand bold and skillful warriors. Colonel Guy Johnson, son- 
in-law of the late Superintendent, succeeded Sir William in this important 
post. 

In a few months the long gathering political agitations of the Eastern 
provinces broke out into open and determined rebellion. The patriots of 
Tryon county hailed with enthusiasm the tidings from Boston, and met to 
express sympathy with their friends in New England, and to organize for 
similar measures. Guy Johnson became leader of the loyalists. Sharp 
discussions and correspondence between him and the revolutionary committee 
followed and in a few months Colonel Johnson abandoned his residence at 
Guy Park, and attended by a formidable body of Indian and Tory adherents, 
among whom were Col. Claus, the Butlers and Brant, made his head quar- 
ters at Fort Stanwix, afterwards at Oswego, and finally at Montreal. To the 
latter place Sir John Johnson, the son and heir of Sir William, followed him 
with a body of three hundred loyalists, chiefly Scotch. 

Then followed the bloody border wars of New York and Pennsylvania. 
The British Government having determined to commit the dastardly and dis- 
gusting wickedness of setting ten thousand savages upon the scattered frontier 



193 

settlements of the United Colonies, found in the Johnsons and Butlers fit dis- 
pensers of massacre to the Northern borders. A brief notice of the incur- 
sions into Western New York, must suffice in this place. 

It was not till the campaign of 1777 that the citizens of Tryon county felt 
the power which had been enlisted against them. Rumors of savage inva- 
sion it is true had alarmed them, and a reported concentration of Indians at 
Oquago (now Windsor) on the Susquehanna, excited at one time much 
apprehension. In July of that year Gen. Herkimer, of the Tryon county 
militia, marched to Unadilla with 300 men, and there held an interview with 
Brant, the celebrated war-chief, who also appeared with a force of warriors. 
The Indians manifested a decided leaning toward the English, and the con- 
ference, afterlnearly becoming a deadly affray, terminated. 

In a few days afterwards it became necessary for the General to issue a 
proclamation, announcing impending invasion. Burgoyne with his well 
appointed army of 7,500 regular troops beside Canadian and Indian auxilar- 
ies, had reached Ticonderoga on his march from Montreal to N. York, and 
Gen. St. Leger with about 2000 soldiers and savages began his march from 
Oswego, with orders to take Fort Schuyler, and pass down the Mohawk to 
Johnstown, and to fortify himself there. On the 3d of August he arrived 
before Fort Schuyler, and found the garrison under Col. Gansevoort, pre- 
pared for a determined resistance. Gen. Herkimer with 800 militia marched 
to reinforce the garrison. Apprised of this, St. Leger detached a body of 
soldiers and Tories under Brant and Col. Butler to watch his approach, and 
if possible to intercept his march. A desperate hand-to-hand battle was 
fought on the 6th of August in the woods at Oriskany, a few miles from the 
Fort. The militia were surprised, and suffered severely for their negligence. 
The rear division of the column gave way at the first attack, and fled. 
The forward division had no alternative but to fight. "Facing out in every 
direction they sought shelter under the trees, and returned the fire of the 
enemy with spirit. In the beginning of the battle, the Indians, whenever 
they saw that a gun was fired from behind a tree, rushed up and tomahawked 
the person thus firing before he had time to reload his gun. To counteract 
this, two men were ordered to station themselves behind one tree, the one 
reserving his fire till the Indian ran up. In this way the Indians were made 
to suffer severely in return. The fighting had continued for some time, and 
the Indians had begun to give way, when Major Watts, a brother-in-law of 
Sir John Johnson, brought up a reinforcement consisting of a detachment of 
Johnson's Greens. The blood of the Germans boiled with indignation at 
the sight of these men. Many of the Greens were personally known to them. 
They had fled their country and were now returned in arms to subdue it. 
Their presence under any circumstances would have kindled up the resent- 
ment of these militia, but coming up as they now did in aid of a retreating 
foe, called into exercise the most bitter feelings of hostility. — They fired on 
them as they advanced, and then rushing from behind their covers attacked 
them with their bayonets, and those who had none with the butt end of 



194 

their muskets. This contest was maintained hand to hand for nearly half 
an hour. — The Greens made a manful resistance, but were finally obliged to 
give way before the dreadful fury of their assailants, with the loss of thirty 
killed upon the spot where they first entered." — (Annals of Tryon County.) 

The Americans lost in killed nearly 200, and about as many wounded and 
prisoners. The Indians according to their own statement lost 100 warriors 
killed ; and the tories aud regulars about the same number. Gen. Herkimer 
was wounded, and a few days after the battle died. During the battle an 
efficient sally was made from the Fort by Col. Willet. On the 22d of August, 
St. Leger, alarmed at the rumored approach of Arnold, abaudoned the seige, 
and retired in great confusion, leaving behind a great part of his baggage. 

In the summer of 1778, Brant made his head quarters at Oquago and Una- 
dilla, and there mustered a band of Indians and Tories, ready for any bar- 
barity which might offer. The inhabitants of Cherry Valley threw up rude 
fortifications, of the need of which the hovering parties of enemies gave 
warning. Several attacks and skirmishes occurred along the frontiers. In 
July of this year, Col. John Butler made the celebrated incursion into Wyom- 
ing. After ravaging that ill-fated valley, Col. Butler returned to Niagara, 
but the Indians again took their station at Oquago. In the month of No- 
vember Cap. Walter Butler, a son of the devastator of Wyoming, to gratify a 
personal resentment, obtained from his father a detachment of 200 " Butler 
Rangers," and permission to employ the 500 Indians which Brant commanded 
at Oquago. Under circumstances which proved the Tory commander to be 
the most pitiless barbarian of the troop, their united forces assailed the little 
settlement of Cherry Valley, on the morning of the 1 ith November. Through 
the inexcusable neglect of the officer in command of the Fort, the farmers 
were surprised in their houses, with several officers from the Fort, who were 
their lodgers. The commander of the post, refusing to yield himself a pris- 
oner, fell by the tomahawk. A piteous scene of massacre and devastation 
followed. The Senecas, the most untameable of the savages, with some 
tories, were first in the fray, and slew without mercy or discrimination. 
Brant and his Mohawks, less inhuman here than their barbarous or renegade 
allies, plied their hatchets with less fury. The buildings and stacks of hay 
and grain were fired. The troops in the Fort repelled the attack of the enemy, 
but were not strong enough to sally from their entrenchments. At night the 
Indians had begun their march homeward, with about forty prisoners. On 
the following day a detachment of militia arrived from the Mohawk, and the 
last prowling parties of Indians disappeared. The Annalist of Tryon 
County says, "the most wanton acts of cruelty had been committed, but the 
detail is too horrible and I will not pursue it further. The whole settlement 
exhibited an aspect of entire and complete desolation. The cocks crew from 
the tops of the forest trees, and the dogs howled through the fields and woods. 
The inhabitants who escaped with the prisoners who were set at liberty, 
abandoned the settlement."* 

*In the summer of 1781, Col. Willett met and defeated Major Ross and Walter Butler, 



195 

During the same year, McDonald, a tory, with 300 Indians and tories was 
ravaging the Dutch settlements of Schoharie. — "What shall be done?" said 
Col. Harper, the bold partisan, to Col. Vroeman, the commander of the Fort, 
while the enemy were scouring the country around. " Oh, nothing at all," 
the officer replied, "we be so weak we cannot do anything " Col. Harper 
ordered his horse and laid his course for Albany — he rode right down through 
the enemy who were scattered over all the country. At Fox's Creek he put 
up at a tory tavern for the night. He retired to bed after having locked the 
door. Soon there was a loud rapping at the door. "What is wanted?" 
"We want to see Col. Harper." The Col. arose and unlocked the door, 
seated himself on the bed, and laid his sword and pistols before him. In 
stepped four men. " Step one inch over that mark," said the Colonel, " and 
you are dead men. " After talking a little time with him they left the room. 
He again secured the door, and sat on his bed till daylight appeared. He 
then ordered his horse, mounted and rode for Albany, and the enemy were 
round the house. An Indian followed him almost into Albany, taking to his 
heels when the Colonel wheeled round and presented his pistol. Next morn- 
ing the Schoharie people heard a tremendous shrieking and yelling, and 
looking out, saw the enterprising partisan amongst the enemy with a troop 
of horse. — The men in the fort rushed out, and the country was soon cleared 
of the whole crew of the marauders. 

The narrow limits allowed to this portion of the volume, warn that no 
further space can be occupied with a detail of the incidents of the Border 
Wars of New York. In 1779, Gen. Sullivan made his well known expedi- 
tion into the territory of the Indians. During the remaining years of the 
war the frontiers were sorely harrassed. Bands of savages and loyalists 
incessantly emerged from the forests to ravage, burn and kill. And if they 
succeeded in bringing dreadful misery upon the homes of the borderers, it 
was not without resolute resistance on the part of the latter. Under the lead 
of Willett, the Harpers and other partisans not less sagacious than deter- 
mined, the marauders often felt to their discomfiture the rifles of the fron- 
tiers ; and the well authenticated traditions of individual daring and 
adventure, rivals in interest the annals of knight-errantry. 

Soon after the close of the Revolutionary War, emigration began to pene- 
trate Western New York from three quarters. Pennsylvanians, particularly 

and Johnson Hall. In the rapid retreat which followed, Capt. Butler was pursued by a 
small party of Oneida Indians who adhered, alone of the Six Nations, to the American 
side. Swimming his horse across the West Canada Creek, he turned and defied his pur- 
suers. "An Oneida immediately discharged his rifle and wounded him and he fell. 
Throwing down his rifle and his blanket, the Indian plunged into the the creek and swam 
across. As soon as he had gained the opposite bank, he raised his tomahawk, and with a 
yell, sprang like a tiger upon his fallen foe. Butler supplicated, though in vain for mercy. 
The Oneida with his uplifted axe, shouted in broken English, " Sherry Valley ! remember 
Sherry Valley !" and then buried it in his brains. He tore the scalp from the head of his 
victim, still quivering in the agonies of death, and ere the remainder of the Oneidas had 
joined him, the spirit of Walter Butler had gone to give up its account. The place where 
he crossed is called Butler's Ford to this day." — (Annals of Tryon County ) 



196 

inhabitants of the region of Wyoming, pushed up the Susquehanna to Tioga 
Point, where, diverging, some made settlements along the Chemung and 
Canisteo, while others established themselves on the East branch of the 
Susquehanna and its tributaries. Adventurers from the East, crossing from 
New England or the Hudson river counties to Unadilla, dropped down the 
river in canoes and settled along the Susquehanna or Chemung, or travelled 
into the upper Genesee country. Yet another band took the ancient road 
through the Mohawk valley to Oneida Lake, then on to Canadesaga. 

In May, 1784, Hugh White passing the boundary of civilization settled at 
Whitestown, near Utica. In the same year James Dean settled at Rome. 
In 1786, a Mr. Webster, became the first white settler of the territory now 
comprised in the county of Onondaga. In 1788, Asa Danforth and Comfort 
Tyler, located at Onondaga Hollow. In 1793, John L. Hardenburgh settled 
on the site of the city of Auburn. In 1789, James Bennett and John Harris 
established a ferry at Cayuga Lake. In 1787, Jemima Wilkinson's disciples 
made their first settlement on the outlet of Crooked Lake one mile South of 
the present village of Dresden. On their arrival at Geneva from the East 
they found, says a local historian, but a solitary log house, and that not fin- 
ished, inhabited by one Jennings. 

After the purchase of Phelps and Gorham, of their Western estate, Mr. 
Phelps selected the site at the foot of Canandaigua Lake as the central local- 
ity in his purchase, and the village of Canandaigua received its first settler 
in the spring of 1789. Many others followed during the same season, and in 
the August ensuing the new village was described as being " full of people 
residents, surveyors, explorers, adventurers. Houses were going up — it was 
a busy, thriving place." 

In the fall of 1788, Kanadesaga (now Geneva) is described as having become 
" a pretty brisk place, the focus of speculators, explorers, the Lessee Company 
and their agents, and the principal seat of the Indian trade for a wide region. 
Horatio Jones {the Interpreter) was living in a log house covered with bark 
on the bank of the lake, and had a small stock of goods for the Indian trade. 
Asa Ramson, (the afterwards Pioneer of Buffalo, ) occupied a hut and was 
manufacturing Indian trinkets. Lark Jennings had a log cabin and trading 
establishment covered with bark on the lake shore, which was occupied by 
Dr. Benton. There was a cluster of log houses all along on the low ground 
near the lake " In 1794, Col. Williamson having assumed the agency of the 
Pulteney Estate, began improvements at Geneva by the erection of the 
Geneva Hotel.* " It was completed in December and opened with a grand 
ball, which furnished a memorable epoch in the earl}' history of the Genesee 
country. The hotel was talked of far and wide as a wonderful enterprise, 
and such it really was." In the same year Col. W. began his improvements 
at Sodus By this time or in a few years later, nearly all the principal towns 
between Seneca Lake and the Genesee river in the northern district of the 
purchase, had received their first few settlers. 

* Now Geneva Water Cure. 



i 9 7 

In the meantime the valleys of the Susquehanna and its tributaries, had 
been penetrated by adventurers from the South and East. In the year 1787, 
Captain Joseph Leonard moving up the Susquehanna in a canoe with his 
family from Wyoming, made the first permanent settlement at Binghamton. 
In the same year Col. Rose, Joshua Whitney, and a few others, settled in the 
same vicinity. The settlement at Wattles' Ferry, (now Unadilla village.) a 
well known localitv in the early days, had been made sometime previous. 

The Indian settlement at Oquago, (now Windsor, ) as has been stated before, 
was of long standing. For a few years previous to thet French War of 1756, 
an Indian mission had been established there, at the instance of the elder 
President Edwards. A small colony of emigrants made a settlement at this 
place in 1785. In the same year James Mc Master made the first settlement 
at Owego. Tioga Point is said to have been settled as early as 1780, but this 
seems incredible, unless the first residents were Tories. The pioneers of the 
Chemung Valley were principally Wyoming people, originally from Connec- 
ticut. Col. John Handy was the pioneer at Elmira, settling there in 1788. 

The Chemung Valley enjoyed some fame before the arrival of the pioneers. 
John Miller, Enoch Warner, John Squires, Abijah Patterson, Abner Wells, 
and others, are given as the names of pioneers of the valley at Elmira and 
its vicinity ; besides Lebbeus Hammond, of Wyoming, renowned for personal 
prowess above most of the men of the border. A notice of the settlements 
of Chemung, Cauisteo and Conhocton, has been given in the preceding por- 
tions of this volume. 

The brief time allowed for the preparation of this sketch, and the unpar- 
alleled confusion of the otherwise valuable works from which our facts must 
be derived, will compel a random notice of the time of commencing the prin- 
cipal settlements remaining unnoticed. Rev. Andrew Gray and Major Moses 
Van Campen, with a sTnall colony, settled at Almond, Allegany county, in 
1796. Judge Church, of Angelica, not long afterward, began the settlement 
of Genesee Valley in the same county. William and James Wadsworth, 
emigrated to their fine estate at Big Tree or Geneseo from Connecticut, in 
1790. 

It was till about the year 1798, that the State Road from Utica to the Gen- 
esee River at Avon, by way of Cayuga Ferry and Canandaigua, was com- 
pleted. In 1799, a stage passed over this road in three days. In 1800, a road 
was made from Avon to Ganson's, now Le Roy. For many years this old 
Buffalo Road was the centre of settlement. The wide belt of dark, wet forest, 
which extended along the shore of L,ake Ontario from Sodus to Niagara, 
formed a strong-hold of pestilence, which few dared to venture into. Not 
even the unmatched hydraulic advantages of the Genesee Falls, could tempt 
the speculator to encounter the fevers that there unnerved the arm of enter- 
prise. It is true that as early as 1790, " Indian Allen," a demi-savage ren- 
egade from New Jersey, resuming a sort of civilization after the Revolution- 
ary war, erected mills at these falls on a certain "one hundred acre tract " 
given him for that purpose by Mr. Phelps, but it seems that the enterprise 
was premature. — Other mills along the line of settlement engrossed the cus- 



198 

torn, and the solitary miller had hardly employment enough to keep his 
mill in repair. Sometimes it was wholly abandoned, and the chance cus- 
tomer put the mill in motion, ground his own grist, and departed through 
the forest. In 1810, however, settlements having been made in the Lake 
district, a bridge was built across the Genesee at this point, and in the fol- 
lowing year Col. Nathaniel Rochester, with two associates, Cols. Fitzhugh 
and Carrol, had become the proprietors of Allen's lot, laid out a village plot 
and sold several lots. Thus was founded the city of Rochester. In 1817, it 
was incorporated a village with the name of Rochesterville. In 1834, it re- 
ceived its city charter. 

The Holland Company purchased their great estate west of the Genesee of 
Robert Morris, in 1792 and 1793. Mr. Joseph Eilicott, of Maryland, the 
first agent of this Company, and for many years a prominent citizen, arrived 
in Western New York, in 1797. In 1801, Batavia was founded under his aus- 
pices. — In 179S, there was an insignificant huddle of log houses, not a dozen 
in all, on the site of the present city of Buffalo. The possession of the lands 
at the mouth of Buffalo creek, long a favorite place of rendezvous of the 
Indians, was deemed of importance by Mr. Eilicott, and on purchasing it, 
plotted there the village of New Amsterdam, with its Schimtnelpinninck, 
Stadtnitski, and Vollenhoven Avenues. 



SETTLER-LIFE. 

The Editor has had in his possession a manuscript sketch of Settler-life, of 
much value for its exactness and particularly of detail, prepared several 
years since by a gentleman of accurate observation and most just sympathies, 
himself in early life a woodsman and a true lover of nature, and always a 
hearty friend of the pioneer. It was expected that liberal extracts from this 
manuscript might have been given, but being unexpectedly curtailed in 
space, we can present but a passage or two. 

A settler's home. 

As I was travelling through tbe county on horseback on a summer day 
in an early year of settlement I fell in company with two gentlemen, who 
were going in the same direction. One of them was the land agent from 
Bath, who was going to the Genesee river, the other was a foreigner on his 
way from Easton, in Pennsylvania, to Presque Isle (now Erie; on Lake 
Erie. We had followed in Indian file a mere path through the woods for 
several miles, passing at long intervals a log house where the occupants had 
just made a beginning ; when having passed the outskirts of settlement and 
penetrated deep into the woods, our attention was attracted by the tinkling 
of a cow bell, and the sound of an axe in chopping. We soon saw a little 
break in the forest, and a log house. As we approached we heard the loud 



i 9 9 

barking of a dog, and as we got near the clearing were met by him with an 
angry growl as if he would have said, " You can come no further without 
my master's permission." A shrill whistle from within called off the dog. 
We proceeded to the house. A short distance from it, standing on the fallen 
trunk of a large hemlock tree, which he had just chopped once in two, was 
a fine looking young man four or five and twenty years of age, with an axe 
in his hand. He was dressed in a tow frock and trousers, with his head and 
feet bare. The frock, open at the top, showed that he wore no shirt, and 
exhibited the muscular shoulders and full chest of a very athletic and power- 
ful man. When we stopped our horses he stepped off the log, shook hands 
with the agent, and saluting us frankly, asked us to dismount and rest our- 
selves, urging that the distance to the next house was six miles, with nothing 
but marked trees to guide us a part of the way ; that it was nearly noon, and 
although he could not promise us anything very good to eat, yet he could 
give us something to prevent us from suffering with hunger. He had no 
grass growing yet, but he would give the horses some green oats. We con- 
cluded to accept the invitation and dismounted and went into the house. 

Before describing the house I will notice the appearance of things around 
it, premising that the settler had begun his improvements in the spring be- 
fore our arrival. A little boy about three years old was playing with the 
dog, which though so resolute at our approach, now permitted the child to 
push him over and sit down upon him. A pair of oxen and a cow with a 
bell on , were lying in the shade of the woods ; two or three hogs were root- 
ing in the leaves near the cattle, and a few fowls were scratching the soil. 
There was a clearing, or rather chopping around the house of about four 
acres, half of which had been cleared off and sowed with oats, which had 
grown very rank and good. The other half of the chopping had been mere- 
ly burnt over and then planted with corn and potatoes, a hill being planted 
wherever there w r as room between the logs. The corn did not look very 
well. The chopping was enclosed with a log fence. A short distance from 
the house a fine spring of water gushed cut of the gravel bank, from which 
a small brook ran down across the clearing, along the borders of which a few 
geese were feeding. 

When we entered the house the young settler said, "Wife, here is the 
land-agent and two other men," and turning to us said, " This is my wife." 
She was a pretty looking young woman dressed in a coarse loose dress, and 
bare footed. When her husband introduced us, she was a good deal embar- 
rassed, and the flash of her dark eyes and the crimson glow that passed over 
her countenance, showed that she was vexed at our intrusion. The young 
settler observed her vexation and said, "Never mind, Sally, the Squire (so 
he called the agent) knows how people have to live in the woods." She 
regained her composure in a moment and greeted us hospitably, and with- 
out any apologies for her house or her costume. After a few minutes con- 
versation, on the settler's suggesting that he had promised " these men 
something to eat to prevent their getting hungry," she began to prepare the 
frugal meal. When we first entered the house she sat near the door, spin- 



200 

ning flax on a little wheel, and a baby was lying near her in a cradle formed 
of the bark of a birch tree, which resting like a trough on rockers, made a 
very smooth, neat little cradle. While the settler and his other guests were 
engaged in conversation, I took notice of the house and furniture. The 
house was about 20 by 26 feet, constructed of round logs chinked with pieces 
of split logs, and plastered on the outside with clay. The floors were made 
of split logs with the flat side up ; the door, of thin pieces split out of a large 
log, and the roof of the same. The windows were holes unprotected by 
glass or sash ; the fire place was made of stone and the chimney of sticks 
and clay. On one side of the fire place was a ladder leading to the chamber. 
There was a bed in one corner of the room, a table and five or six chairs, and 
on one side a few shelves of split boards, on which were a few articles of 
crockery and some tin-ware, and on one of them a few books. Behind the 
door was a large spinning wheel and a reel, and over head on wooden hooks 
fastened to the beams were a number of things, among which were a nice 
rifle, powder horn, bullet pouch, tomahawk and hunting knife — the com- 
plete equipment of the hunter and the frontier settler. Every thing looked 
nice and tidy, even to the rough stones which had been laid down for a 
hearth. 

In a short time our dinner was ready. It consisted of corn bread and 
milk, eaten out of tin basins with iron spoons. The settler ate with us, but 
his wife was employed while we were at dinner in sewing on what appeared 
to be a child's dress. The settler and the agent talked all the time, generally 
on the subject of the settlement of the country. After dinner the latter and 
his companion took their departure, the one making the little boy a present 
of a half dollar, and the other giving the same sum to the baby. 

I have now introduced to the reader one of the best and most intelligent 
among the first settlers of the county. He was a man of limited informa- 
tion, except as to what related to his own particular business ; but his judg- 
ment was good, and he was frank, candid and fearless. He belonged to that 
class of men who distinguished themselves as soldiers during the Revolu- 
tionary War, and who were in many instances the descendants of the cele- 
brated "bold yeomanry of old England," whose praises were commemorated 
by the English bard when he wrote, 

" Princes and lords may flourish or may fade, 
A breath can make them, as a breath has made ; 
But a bold yeomanry, their country's pride, 
When once destroyed, can never be supplied." 

THE FRIENDLINESS OF THE PIONEERS. 

The social relations and neighborly intercourse of the settlers were of the 
most kind and friendly character, and proved the truth of the common say- 
ing that "people were much more friendly in new countries than they were 
in the old settlements." It was no uncommon thing among them to comply 
literally with the injunction of scripture which requires us "to give to him 



201 

that asketh and from him that would borrow to turn not away." Their 
kindness and sympathy to and for each other was indeed most extraordinary, 
and showed a degree of sensibility which we look for in vain in a more cul- 
tivated and enlightened state of society. At the commencement of the 
sugar-making perhaps, some one in the settlement would cut his leg badly 
with an axe, making a deep and ghastly wound, which would render him a 
cripple for weeks and perhaps for months. The neighbors would assemble, 
that is, make a bee and do all his work as far as it could be done at that time, 
and then, by arrangement among themselves, one man would go every after- 
noon and gather the sap, carrying it to the house where it could be boiled 
up by the settler's wife. Again, one would be taken sick in harvest time : 
his neighbors would make a bee, harvest and secure his crops, when, at the 
same time, their own grain very likely would be going to waste for want of 
gathering. In seed time a man's ox would perhaps be killed by the falling 
of a tree : the neighbors would come with their teams and drag in his wheat 
when they had not yet sowed their own. A settler's house would be acci- 
dently burned down — his family would be provided for at the nearest neigh- 
bors, and all would turn out and build and finish a house in a day or two so 
that the man could take his family into it. Instances like these, in which 
the settlers exhibited their kindness and sympathy for each other might be 
extended indefinitely, but we have referred to a sufficient number to show 
the kindness and good feeling that existed among them. 

A REMINISCENCE, 

For the purpose of showing how much time and labor it required in 
many cases for the first settlers to procure even the most common articles of 
food, I will state what has been related to me by one of the most respectable 
and intelligent of the first settlers of Dansville.* He stated that when he 
first settled in that town, it was very difficult to procure provisions of any 
kind ; and there was no grain to be had anywhere but of the Indians, at 
Squaky Hill, who had corn, which they would sell for a silver dollar a 
bushel. In order to get some corn for bread — his supply having become 
exhausted — he went several miles to a place where a wealthy man was mak- 
ing large improvements and employed a good many hands, He chopped for 
him four days, for which he received two dollars. He then worked one day 
for another man to pay for the use of a horse, and on the next day started 
for the Indian Village, a distance of fifteen or twenty miles, where he got 
two bushels of corn for his two dollars. The corn had been kept by the 
Indians tied up in bunches by the husks, and hung around the walls of their 
cabin, and was very black and dirty, covered with soot and ashes. He took 
the corn home and his wife washed it clean with a good deal of labcr and 
dried it so that it could be ground. He then got the horse another day, and 
carried the corn to mill, twelve or fifteen miles, and was fortunate enough to 
get it ground and reach home the same day. Here we see that it took seven 

* The late Judge Harumoud, of Hammondsport. 



202 

days work of the settler to get the meal of two bushels of corn. The old 
gentleman 's eye kindled when he related these circumstances, and he said 
that the satisfaction and happiness he felt when sitting by the fire and look- 
ing at the bag full of meal standing in the corner of his log house, far sur- 
passed what he experienced at any other time in the acquisition of property, 
although he became in time the owner of a large farm, with a large stock of 
horses, cattle, and sheep, and all the necessary implements of a substantial 
and wealthy farmer. 



THE VILLAGE OF CORNING.* 

Corning owes its existence and prosperity to no original superiority of 
location over neighboring villages, but has sprung up to a thriving and com- 
manding position by having become the centre of great public improvements. 
The history of these is the history of the place. 

By the construction of the Chemung Canal this point was made an inland 
termination of navigable communication with the Hudson river and the 
ocean. It was consequently the point from which the products of the for- 
est, the field, and the river, for a vast extent of country were destined to 
seek a market. The sagacious enterprise of a few capitalists pointed to it as 
the future centre of an extensive commerce. 

The extensive mines of bituminous coal, at Blossburgh, in the state of 
Pennsylvania, had early attracted attention, and shortly after the completion 
of the Chemung canal two corporations, one of which had been created by 
the state of Pennsylvania, to construct a slack water navigation from Bloss- 
burgh to the state line, and the other by the State of New York, to continue 
the same to Elmira, were authorized by their respective states to build rail- 
roads connecting at the state line, and in this state, extending to a point at 
or near the termination of the Chemung canal. 

The work of constructing these railroads was commenced in 1836, and at 
the same time an association of gentlemen now known as the Corning Com- 
pany, having purchased a large tract of land on both sides of the Chemung 
river, and laying out streets and lots, made a beginning of the future village 
of Corning by the erection of a large hotel called the "Corning House." 
The Corning and Blossburgh railroad was completed and put into operation in 
1840. About the same time the work of building the New York and Erie 
railroad which passes through the village was commenced in the vicinity and 
prosecuted vigorously till the suspension of the work in 1842. The Bank of 
Corning, with a capital of $104,000, had been organized and put in operation 
in 1839. So rapid was the growth of the village, that the population 
amounted in 1841 to 900. 

Here its prosperity was for a time arrested. The commercial revolutions 
which paralyzed enterprise and industry everywhere were felt with peculiar 
severity here. The work upon the New York and Erie railroad which had 

♦Prepared for this volume by a correspondent. 



203 

drawn together a considerable population, was suspended. The property of 
the Corning and Blossburgh railroad was seized by creditors. The price of 
lumber, the great staple of the country, would hardly pay the cost of manu- 
facture. Large quantities of coal lay upon the bank of the river and in 
eastern markets, wanting purchasers. Bankruptcy was almost universal, 
and the resources of industry were almost entirely cut off. 

Notwithstanding these drawbacks to the prosperity of the village, the 
advantages of its position and the hopeful energies of its citizens did not 
suffer the relapse to continue long. — After a while the demand for coal 
increased and the market enlarged Improved prices of lumber stimulated 
its manufacture, and larger quantities were brought here for shipment. The 
place became the centre of a heavy trade, and capital sought investment in 
manufactures. In 1848 the village was incorporated under the general law, 
containing at the time 1700 inhabitants. 

In the meantime the work of building the Erie railroad was resumed, and 
on the first day of January, 1850, was opened a direct railway communica- 
tion with the city of New York. The elements of prosperity seemed 
complete. 

But there were elements to contend with of an adverse and direful character. 
On the eighteenth day of May, 1 850, occurred a fire, more extended and 
disastrous in proportion to the size of the place, than has often, if ever hap- 
pened elsewhere. The entire business part of the village comprising nearly 
one hundred buildings, with large quantities of lumber, was in a few hours 
laid in ashes. Yet the disaster was so common and universal — misfortune 
had so many companions — there were so many to share the loss that the bur- 
den seemed to be scarcely felt. The embers had not cooled before shanties 
of rough boards supplied the place of stores, and for months almost the entire 
business was carried on in places neither secure from summer rains or thieves. 
In the meantime the work of rebuilding was going on, and in no long 
time substantial and splendid buildings again occupied the place of the 
ruins. 

In the year 1852 was opened the first section of the Buffalo, Corning and 
New York railroad, having its eastern terminus at Corning. The remainder 
of the line to Buffalo, will be in operation in the course of 1853. The Corn- 
ing and Blossburgh railroad also was relaid with a new and heavy rail and 
newly equipped throughout. 

The annual exports of coal and lumber, are forty thousand tons of the for- 
mer, and fifty million feet of the latter. In its canal commerce, Corning is 
the fifth port in the state. 

In new villages and settlements, schools and churches are apt to receive 
but secondary attention. In Corningits Union School of four orfive hundred 
scholars has maintained a not inferior rank, and its five Churches give evi- 
dence of some considerable attention to morals and religion. 

The population is now not far from three thousand, and the sanguine pre- 
dict an increase vastly more rapid in future than it has been in former years. 



204 

THE GREAT WINDFALL. 

The first stable in the town of Bath was literally " put up by a whirl- 
wind." In 1791, or about that time, a destructive hurricane swept over the 
land. Judge Baker in after years took pains to collect information of the 
movements of this great " northern fanatic," and was of the opinion that its 
path from Lake Erie to the Atlantic was about ninety miles in breadth, and 
that the northern limit of its agitation in this county was at the up' er town 
line of Urbana. A more violent " agitator " never passed through the land. 
Thousands of acres of forest were prostrated, and the frightful windfalls, 
briar-grown and tangled, which settlers afterwards found in this count}- were 
the effects of this "inflammatory appeal" to the weak brethren of the 
wilderness. We have met a veteran farmer who was a child at the time 
when the tornado passed, and happened on that day to be left by his parents 
to take care of still younger children, and remembers hiding in a hole in the 
ground with his little brothers while the forest was filled with the terrific 
roar of falling pines. 

Mr. Jonathan Cook, an early settler at Painted Post, was driving a pack 
horse laden with provisions to Pleasant Valley where Phelps and Gorham's 
surveyors were at work, and was near the mouth of Smith's creek, on the 
Conhocton, when the storm struck him. He took refuge under an oak 
tree, while the wind, sweeping furiously up the ravine, uprooted the maples, 
twisted branches from the trees and scattered them in the air like wisps of 
hay. A whirling gust caught the cluster under which he was standing. 
The oak beneath which he had taken refuge was prostrated, but he himself 
fell with his face to the ground and escaped unhurt. His horse however 
met with a strange catastrophe. The whirlwind tore up several large trees 
and imprisoned the unfortunate animal in a cage so impregnable that the 
driver was unable to extricate him, but was obliged to go over to the sur- 
veyors' camp and get men to return with axes and make a breach in the 
walls of the stable. This was rather a rough joke, even for a whirlwind, but 
the horse was but little hurt. 



THE SETTLERS OF DANSVILLE. 

(The notice of the settlement of the town of Dansville originally prepared 
for this work was accidentally lost. At this time it is impossible to supply 
the names of the settlers in the southern part of the town, furnished by Wm. 
C. Rogers, Esq., of Rogersville. The village of Dansville falling within the 
province of the author of the History of Phelps and Gorham's Purchase, 
a brief notice of the settlers of that portion of the old town, formerly a part 
of Steuben county is condensed from that valuable and copious work.) The 
first settler upon the site of the village of Dansville, was Neil McCoy. He 
came from Painted Post and located where his step-son, James McCurdy, 
who came in with him, now resides. The family was four days making the 
journey from Painted Post, camping out two nights on the way. To raise 



205 

their log-house, help came from Bath, Geneseo and Mount Morris, with 
Indians from Squaky Hill and Gardeau. During the first season, it is men- 
tioned that Mrs. McCoy, hearing of the arrival of Judge Hurlburt's family 
at Arkport, eleven miles distant, resolved as an act of backwoods courtesy to 
make the first call. Taking her son with her, she made the journey through 
the woods by marked trees, dined with her new neighbors, and returned in 
time to do her milking after a walk of twenty-two miles. 

Amariah Hammond, Esq., a widely known pioneer of the town who died 
at a venerable age in the winter of 1850, " coming in to explore, slept two 
nights under a pine tree on the premises he afterwards purchased. Early in 
the spring of 1796 he removed his young family from Bath to this place ; his 
wife and infant child on horseback, his household goods and farming uten- 
sils on a sled drawn by four oxen, and a hired man driving the cattle." 

Captain Daniel P. Faulkner was an early property holder and spirited 
citizen of the town in the palmy days of Col. Williamson, and from his 
familiar appellative, "Captain Dan" the village took its name. In 1798 
Jacob Welch, Jacob Martz, Conrad Martz, George Shirey and Frederick 
Barnhart emigrated to Dansville with their families. They came up the 
Conhocton valley, and were three days on the road from Bath, camping out 
two nights. At the arrival of this party the names of the settlers already on 
the ground besides those before named were Mr. Phenix, James Logan, 
David Scholl, John Vanderwenter, Jared Erwin, William Perine. Col. 
Nathaniel Rochester became a resident of Dansville in 1810. 

The settlement of the southern part of this town was not commenced till 
about the year 1816. Of the settlers in that district we can only recall the 
names of Messrs. Wm. C. Rogers and Jonas Bridge. In the year 1816 (or 
about that time) Mr. Rogers, on arriving in the vicinity of the present village 
of Rogersville, found the merest handful of settlers in all that quarter. At 
this day the wilderness has given place to a pleasant village with an acad- 
emy of substantial worth, surrounded by a thriving farming country. 



CONTENTS. 



Notice of the Topography and Geology of Steuben County I 

CHAPTER I. 
Preliminary History : Purchase: Title 8 

CHAPTER II. 
Steuben County immediately previous to its Settlement. A journey sixty- 
five years ago: the Forest: the Rivers, &c. : Benjamin Patterson the 
Hunter : Skirmish at Freeland's Fort : Scuffle with the Interpreter : the 
wild ox of Genesee 19 

CHAPTER III. 
The settlements made under the purchase by Phelps and Gorham. The old 
town of Painted Post : origin of the name : the first settlers : the settle- 
ment of the upper valley of the Canisteo : the Canisteo Flats : life in the 
Cauisteo Valley: a wrestling match: Captain John: old enemies: Van 
Campen and Mohawk : a discomfited savage : capture of a saw-mill : the 
lower Canisteo valley : the Tioga valley : Col. Lindley : a Deerslayer 
immortalized 33 

CHAPTER IV. 
The great Air-Castle : the London Association : Captain Williamson : North- 
umberland : the German Colony : the passage of the Germans through the 
Wilderness: terrors and tribulations: a " Parisian scene." 55 

CHAPTER V. 
The settlement of Bath : consolatory reflections : Serpents : Narrative of 
General McClure : character of the Settlers : early citizens, the Camerons, 
Andrew Smith, &c: an auto-biography: Emigration: the wilderness: 
settlers at Mud Creek : Bath : Captain Williamson : a canoe-voyage : 
Building : Speculation : navigation of the Rivers : business fortunes and 
misfortunes : Crooked Lake navy : a portly and able bodied gentleman 
extinguished : Indian traffic : River navigation : conclusion of the Nar- 
rative 70 

CHAPTER VI. 
Captain Williamson's administration : life at Bath : grand Simcoe War : 
Races : Theatre : vindication of the ancients : Bath Gazette : County 
Newspapers : the Bar : Physicians 99 



207 

CHAPTER VII. 

Settlement of Pleasant Valley : Frederickton, including Wayne, Tyrone and 

Reading : Prattsburgh : Wheeler : Pulteney : Howard : Hornby : Con- 

hocton : the towns south of the Canisteo : Orange : Campbell : Avoca : 

Wayland 118 

CHAPTER VIII. 
The Air-Castle vanishing: close of Col. Williamson's career: his char- 
acter 138 

CHAPTER IX. 
Steuben County since the period of settlement : disasters : progress : pros- 
pects : the citizens and the land proprietors 146 

CHAPTER OF MISCELLANIES. 
The Indians : incidents : Indian names, &c. : game, &c. : deer : wolves : pan- 
thers: bears: beaver: "snake stories:" anecdotes of the chase: the 
" Plumping Mill :" Incidents of the War of 181 2 : the Militia : the Steuben 
Company at the battle of Queenston Heights : the fighting Chief Justice : 
an incident: the "Battle of Dansville " 162 



APPENDIX. 

Organization of Steuben County, and statistical tables. 188 

Sketch of General History of settlement in Western New York 190 

Settler-Life 198 

The village of Corning . ...202 

The " Great Windfall " of 1791— The Settlers of Dansville 204 



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